CBIS Africa Trip 2016.
The CBIS African healthcare infrastructure delegation led by Mr. Raymond Dabney and including Dr. Julius Garvey, member of the Scientific Advisory Board of CBIS, Dr. Allen Herman, Chief Medical Officer of CBIS, and Mr. Melvin Foote, President & CEO of Constituency for Africa concluded, with outstanding results, a trip to Southern Africa and Namibia to launch a historic African Healthcare Initiative.
Beginning in Cape Town, South Africa, the CBIS delegation met with key stakeholders in Government Ministries, political parties, the private sector, civil society, and academia. CBIS discussed and planned collaboration with international regulatory agencies in South Africa and Namibia to provide access to high quality, first-class cannabinoid pharmaceuticals to those critically in need of new treatments for life threatening and debilitating conditions.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, the delegation met with royal representatives of a northern Kingdom located in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. Discussions centered on the central role of traditional cannabinoids in the culture, the traditional medicines of native South Africans and the indigenous plant-based knowledge systems of the entire southern Africa region. Establishing operations in key Southern African cities will enable the Company to develop and supply pharmaceuticals throughout the African continent. CBIS is targeting the underserved medical treatment/pharmaceutical industry in Africa with a total population of over 1.1 billion people.
In Windhoek, Namibia, the delegation began meetings with the leadership of the Namibian National Forensic Science Institute and federal police responsible for regulating highly addictive drugs of abuse. They added important comments on the wide variety of indigenous plants in Namibia and strongly suggested that public abuse and health concerns are some of their main focuses within the context of the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) of Namibia. The Government and the educational and research leaders of southern Africa continue their leadership and commitment in its development and implementation of initiatives to strengthen the country's health-care infrastructure and improve the delivery of health-care education and services to the people of southern Africa. The CBIS delegation is on this similar path while contributing to economic development in Africa through education, job creation, capacity building, and technology transfer.
In northern Windhoek, the delegation toured a drug and alcohol treatment facility of the Ministry of Social Services. The Ministry group explained their concerns related to drugs of abuse and the complete group reached a consensus that the CBIS drug development program is very important and is separate and distinct from their concerns. There Mr. Dabney, Dr. Garvey and Mr. Foote were interviewed by TV1 of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation. The filmed interview was shown on Namibian national evening news and focused on the critical importance of the development of drugs from plants (especially phyto-cannabinoids) in the treatment of widely prevalent health disorders in Namibia (e.g. HIV/AIDS, cancer, and PTSD). The delegation, educational leaders, and the various government entities discussed the critical role that the Raymond C. Dabney University (RCDU) will play in education, job creation, and in the development of effective cannabinoids and other phyto-pharmaceuticals for the many critical ailments that are endemic in the region.
To mark the delegation's success, Mr. Dabney signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with the International University of Management of Namibia. IUM is a private non-profit university that has more than 10,000 graduate students on six campuses across Namibia and serves as the de facto graduate university of Namibia. This MOC is designed for the development of joint educational and research programs. The discussion of the initial formal partnership of the African Healthcare Infrastructure program, and signing of the historic MOC was filmed by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation and shown on national television. Our intentions are to expand scholarship offering to a wide scale of students while expanding campus numbers across the continent.
"Our visit to southern Africa, which also marked by my first visit to Africa, was successful, rich, and fulfilling. The people and leaders of Namibia and South Africa showed us remarkable generosity and we know that our collaboration with the extraordinary institutions and people of the region will result in sustainable drug development, research, educational programs, and job creation covering the basic areas of economic development one step at a time across the vast continent of Africa," commented Mr. Dabney.
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