Sanbao Ghana Pharmaceuticals Limited, a Chinese manufacturing firm in Ghana, has invested a total of US$15 million to expand its production capacity.

The company now has the capacity to produce 15 million units of intravenous infusion annually as a result of this expansion, while increasing its human resource base from 50 to 100.

"Currently, we can say that we are the major intravenous infusion production company in Ghana. This is due to the fact that our production capacity is up to 15 million infusion units per year," Smart Atta Bediako, superintendent pharmacist at the company, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

He said the company, which is a subsidiary of Hualong Group in China, adopted the best system of manufacturing as recommended by the World Health Organization in its production process.

"Our facility is designed in such a way to minimize contamination of our products: That's why we've adopted the 'Form-fill-seal' technology which ensures that the human-product is minimized to the barest level," the pharmacist said.

Intravenous infusion is to correct water and electrolyte imbalances in the body. There are some medications that when administered directly into the body can be dangerous and so these medications are administered through the intravenous infusion. So they serve as the vehicle even for the administering of medication.

"Currently, we manufacture 13 products which are all registered by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and these are all essential medicines that are listed on the list of drugs on the National Health Insurance Authority."

For such an essential medicinal product, quality assurance is a high priority to consider if lives must really be saved.

"We have our quality control laboratory to ensure that all necessary tests are conducted to give an assurance of quality in terms of all the parameters that are required by the compendium. We use the British Pharmacopeia and sometimes the United States Pharmacopeia," Bediako added.

The company now wants to attain a Free Zones status and be able to export 70% of its products to the West African regional market.

There are, however, issues with a timely recovery of payment from clients as a result of delayed payments by the National Health Insurance Authority.

"Because our products are especially for people's human lives, we must deliver it on time as our custom requires. But when we deliver our products to our customers, due to many reasons, we cannot get our payment on time," said Richard Chen, general manager of Sanbao Ghana Pharmaceuticals.

According to Chen, Sanbao saw the need to start the IV production in Ghana because as at 1999 there was only one company producing that product in the country. "You know, here in Ghana at that time (1999) intravenous infusion was a good market because we found that there was only one company producing intravenous infusions in Ghana."

Chen said the company looked forward to introducing the manufacturing of tablets, syrups and capsules in the near future while cooperating with the Foods and Drugs Authority (FDA) for sustainable and increasing the quality of products.