Mozambique lab delegation completes week long collaboration visit to MCAZ

Harare (New Ziana) – A three-member delegation from the Mozambican National Control Laboratory of Medicines on Friday completed a week-long working visit to its Zimbabwean counterpart to learn and share experiences.

Comprising a chemist Adriano Maculuve, pharmacists Felicidade Dengo and Cidalia Tavares, the visit was at the recommendation of the MNCLM head, who has undertaken learning visits to Zimbabwe.

Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) chemistry division head, Kerlvin Dzawo said they had taken the Mozambican team through some of their processes of analysing products.

Dzawo said it emerged that the MCAZ uses modern software to compute the characteristics of the products while in Mozambique, they are still undertaking the computations manually.

“They came to MCAZ to learn the systems and what they need to do to get accredited, to get to the level that the MCAZ operates at and they are going to take the skills back home,” he said.

“They want to go and set up a microbiology lab in their own country.”

Maculuve said his team came to get some experience on how the MCAZ operates and was able to get accredited by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

It also wanted to know how MCAZ managed to get ISO certification from the Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) and the Southern African Development Community Accreditation Service (SADCAS).

MCAZ obtained ISO 90001 certification from SAZ in 2015 and ISO 17025 from SADCAS in 2017.

The learning visit by the MNCLM delegation comes also after similar visits by delegations from Rwanda, Malawi and Zambia.

Dzawo said MCAZ was proud that its work is being recognized by other medicine regulatory authorities in the region.

New Ziana