Rizwana Mia

In an exclusive interview, Rizwana Mia, the Senior Program Manager at the South African Medical Research Council, sheds light on the transformative potential of the African personalized medicine agenda for healthcare within Africa. Personalized medicine, she explains, is a medical model that takes into account a person’s phenotype and genotype when devising a treatment plan, aiming to provide tailored treatment to each individual.

The conventional approach to medicine often overlooked personalization, resulting in generalized treatment plans that may not be effective for specific patients. This challenge is more pronounced in the African population, as most drugs available today have not been extensively tested on African individuals. Consequently, there is a risk of adverse drug effects or the possibility of medication being irrelevant to the population.

To address these obstacles, the South African Medical Research Council launched a portfolio in pharmacogenomics, focusing on studying severe adverse drug reactions based on the essential drug list used in the healthcare system. By understanding the genetic diversity of African genomes, personalized medicine can be tailored to meet the unique needs of the population, thus transforming healthcare outcomes in the region.