Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease that has become a global pandemic. COVID-19 is spreading in Africa, and Zimbabwe has not been spared. The cases in Zimbabwe are mainly from imported cases due to high volume of travellers from the COVID-19 hotspots. In Zimbabwe, local transmission is also anticipated due to inter- and intracity travelling. Frontline health workers are at risk of infection due to contact with infected people as they discharge their duties. In this setting, the risk to community pharmacists and pharmacy personnel is poorly understood and characterised. This paper looked at the risks of infection that are peculiar to community pharmacy personnel and suggested some recommendations to reduce the risk to COVID-19 infection.

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Background: African Potato (hypoxis hemerocallidea), is used for enhancing immune system in Southern Africa. It is among the plants of intense commercial and scientific interest; hence, the aim of this study was to describe its chemistry and pharmacology. Methods: PubMed, Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (CENTRAL) and Google Scholar were searched independently for relevant literature. The last search occurred in October 2018. Other research material was obtained from Google. The following search terms were used, but not limited to: "African Potato", "hypoxis", "hemerocallidea", "rooperol." Articles that were explaining the chemistry and pharmacology of hypoxis hemerocallidea were included. Results: Thirty articles from PubMed, Cochrane and Google Scholar were eligible. Three webpages were included from Google. Results showed that the tuberous rootstock (corm) of African Potato is used traditionally to treat wasting diseases, testicular tumours, insanity, barrenness, impotency, bad dreams, intestinal parasites, urinary infection, cardiac disease and enhancing immunity. The plant contains hypoxoside, which is converted rapidly to a potent antioxidant, rooperol in the gut. The corm contains sterols, sterol glycosides, stanols, terpenoids, saponins, cardiac glycosides, tannins and reducing sugars. A dose of 15 mg/kg/day of hypoxoside is reportedly therapeutic. Preclinical studies of African Potato have shown immunomodulation, antioxidant, antinociceptive, hypoglycaemic, anti-inflammatory, anticonvulsant, antibacterial, uterolytic, antimotility, spasmolytic and anticholinergic effects. The common side effects of African Potato are nausea and vomiting, which subside over time. In vitro, African Potato demonstrated inhibitory effects on CYP1A2, 2C9, 2D6, 3A4, 3A5, CYP19-metabolism and induction of P-glycoprotein. In vivo, it did not alter the pharmacokinetics of efavirenz or lopinavir/ritonavir.

Emergency contraceptives play a major role in preventing unwanted pregnancy. The use of emergency contraceptives is characterized by myths and lack of knowledge by both health professionals and users. The main objective of this paper is to summarize the clinical pharmacology of hormonal methods of emergency contraception. A literature review was done to describe in detail the mechanism of action, efficacy, pharmacokinetics, safety profile, and drug interactions of hormonal emergency contraceptive pills. This information is useful to healthcare professionals and users to fully understand how hormonal emergency contraceptive methods work.

The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to national lockdowns in multiple states. The education system, including pharmacy education, has been negatively affected by the subsequent closure of universities. Many institutions have resorted to virtual learning, which work best in settings with fast, stable internet connections and where electricity is readily available. In resource-limited settings, popular virtual interaction platforms like Zoom may not work, and educators have to devise novel ways to continue teaching. The University of Zimbabwe used innovative mobile phone-based processes to ensure continuation of the final-year pharmacy students’ honours research projects, supervision, and timely submission. This facilitated rapid communication between students and professors and allowed effective guidance for the students’ research process. All students completed their projects; 13 out of 16 submitted their write-ups within the deadline; all students passed, 69% scored an upper second (2.1) grade or better, indicating the high quality of the majority of the research projects.

towards improved OS when compared with the other TKIs: afatinib (HR 0.80, 95% CrI 0.52-1.23), erlotinib (HR 0.82, 95% CrI 0.44-1.53), gefitinib (HR 0.76, 95% CrI 0.58-1.00), osimertinib (HR 0.76, 95% CrI 0.52-1.13), and icotinib (HR 0.64, 95% CrI 0.34-1.22); a statistically significantly improved PFS compared with erlotinib (HR 0.45, 95% CrI 0.22-0.90) and gefitinib (HR 0.51, 95% CrI 0.39-0.66); a trend towards improved PFS for afatinib (HR 0.67, 95% CrI 0.44-1.02), osimertinib (HR 0.93, 95% CrI 0.64-1.35) and icotinib (HR 0.59, 95% CrI 0.31-1.14). Conclusions: Overall, this NMA found that dacomitinib had a consistent trend towards improved OS and PFS when compared with other TKIs for first-line treating locally advanced or metastatic EGFR mutation positive NSCLC among Asian populations.

To ameliorate the impact of brain drain on quality of education at the University of Zimbabwe, the Health Education Advanced Leadership in Zimbabwe (HEALZ) programme was implemented in 2012. The authors present a retrospective narrative review of the pharmacy educators’ activities under the programme, and the impact on pharmacy education. Five pharmacy educators were enrolled into the one-year programme between 2016 and 2020. The programme consisted of three intensive one-week face-to-face sessions focused on health professions education. In between the sessions, the educators conducted needs’ assessments to establish gaps in pharmacy training and developed curricula in the areas of herbal medicine, snakebites, drug-herb interactions, oncology, and health economics. Thereafter, they delivered seven conference abstracts and nine continuing professional development training sessions. The pharmacy educators are now working on transferring the HEALZ programme to the two new pharmacy training institutions, to strengthen the pharmacy education workforce across the country.

Information about where medicines are in stock and how much they cost facilitates consumers’ timely access to affordable medicines by enabling price comparisons and the identification of stockists. Our aims were to: (1) Review how consumer access to price and availability information is engaged within the Medicine Access discourse and (2) identify factors associated with the existence of interventions that provide consumers with medicine availability and price information. We conducted two scoping reviews. We reviewed 26 medicine access and pharmaceutical system strengthening frameworks to assess how they conceptualise information access. We then reviewed four interventions that provide consumers with availability and price information to identify the factors associated with these interventions’ existence. We found that in the medical access discourse, information is mainly cast as helpful to entities that ensure medicine access for populations. Information as an enabler of medicine procurement for consumers/households is less emphasised. We then identified the following eight factors that facilitate consumer access to reliable medicine price and availability information: the recognition of a medicine access problem that can be mitigated by consumer access to information; cross-sectoral collaboration; the willingness of medicine sellers to disclose their inventory information; having information quality control measures; appropriate incentives for intervention adoption; enabling legal environments; systems of pooling information; and access to digital information technology infrastructure. We recommend that more theoretical and implementation attention ought to be directed at how medicine price and medicine availability information can empower individual consumers to make sound purchasing decisions.