Southern African Development Community (SADC), as a region has harmonized medicines registration guidelines in the common technical document (CTD) format that were approved in January 2015. Nevertheless, the harmonization of product information and labelling requirements within the region has been outstanding. Harmonizing regulatory standards to create one regional market and mutual recognition is one of the strategies included in the draft Strategy on Regional Manufacturing of Essential Medicines and Health Commodities (2016-2020), which supports the pharmaceutical component in the SADC Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap 2015 – 2063. Moreover, this supports the priority areas of creating an enabling regulatory environment and strengthening medicines regulatory capacity in the approved SADC Pharmaceutical Business Plan 2015 – 2019.
 
Taking into account the need for stakeholder engagement in drafting regulatory guidelines, a workshop with industry and regulators was held as the initial step in developing a regional guideline on product information and labelling. This engagement resulted in drafting instructions for the product information and labelling guideline that were approved by the regulators forum. Subsequently, these drafting instructions were utilized for formulating the guidelines presented in this document. Please Click the following links to download the Guidelines and Table for Comments.

SADC GUIDELINE ON PRODUCT INFORMATION AND LABELING

SADC GUIDELINE ON PRODUCT INFORMATION AND LABELING: TABLE FOR COMMENTS