AMFA stands for Affordable Medicines For All.

Our goal is to raise the bar in providing essential medicines to charitable hospitals and clinics in a way that encourages and promotes the local economy in developing countries around the world. AMFA Foundation was established in 1995.

Mission Statement Vision Statement

In 1997, AMFA Foundation assisted in founding Affordable Medicines For Africa (AMFA South Africa), a not-for-gain organization registered in South Africa.

AMFA's Mission of Service

Affordable Medicines For Africa (AMFA), a not-for-gain organization, brings business expertise and sophisticated management techniques to bear on the intractable problem of affordable medicines for Africa's poor. Since 1996, AMFA has been building a sustainable essential medicine supply system in Africa serving Africans. AMFA is committed to:

• Developing African sources for essential medicines that meet international standards
• Finding reliable, cost-effective distribution and transportation channels
• Providing medicines, supplies, and equipment to Christian missions and other healthcare professionals at or below competitors' prices, in practical quantities, with quicker delivery times (30 days or less)
• Offering missions logistical support through automated ordering and inventory control
• Drawing an international staff of experts in pharmacology, administration, logistics, and ministry

SERVING AFRICA'S POOR

With high quality, low cost generic medicines

• manufactured in Africa
• delivered quickly and efficiently
• supplied to Christian missions, charitable hospitals, and other healthcare providers
• Through partnerships and longer-term initiatives to build a sustainable African healthcare infrastructure

Affordable Medicines for Africa (AMFA) is a not-for-profit organization registered and headquartered in South Africa, and with several distribution centers on the continent. AMFA's goal is to become a self-sustaining enterprise and the leading African supplier of affordable medicines, medical supplies, and equipment for Africa's poor. AMFA is committed to serving the needs of Christian missions, hospitals, and other healthcare providers on the continent through high quality, affordable products, timely and efficient distribution, and unparalleled customer service.

AMFA Foundation, a not-for-profit organization registered in Georgia, raises funds for Affordable Medicines for Africa to support its development activities and ongoing operations until such time as AMFA is fully self-supporting.

close Christian Healthcare Organizations

AMFA works to strengthen local Christian health associations and organizations, thereby promoting cost-effective procurement and inventory of medicines around the world. We encourage the development of purchasing cooperatives, electronic communication linkages, and peer learning networks among health ministries.

AMFA is committed to serving:

• Christian health associations
• Christian hospital systems and buying groups
• Denomination and mission health programs
• International relief and development agencies

close Christian Healthcare Workers

For more than a century, one of the most effective means of evangelization in the church has been through physical health missions. These health ministries have been holistic; bringing healing in both a physical and spiritual sense.

There is nothing we have more in common with each other than health, no matter where we are in the world. It is a neutral issue, and Christian healthcare professionals treat everyone no matter what their spiritual condition. But with their loving care of suffering people, doctors and nurses open the door to the Gospel message of Jesus Christ in a very personal way.

Christian health professionals are daily winning people all over the world to Jesus by simply following His example of ministry, healing people in body and spirit.

Infectious diseases, the world's biggest killer of children under five and working age adults-- many of whom are breadwinners and parents-- account for half the deaths in developing countries. Many of these killers-- e.g., TB, malaria, pneumonia, HIV-related opportunistic infections-- are treatable with generic drugs and preventable with simple healthcare commodities, all available at relatively low costs by developed countries' standards.

Yet even these inexpensive medicines and supplies are beyond the reach of 320 million Africans. The population in many sub-Saharan African countries-- crippled by poverty, racked by war, and ravaged by AIDS-- earns less than $1 a day. Christian missions and charity hospitals-- which constitute half the region's meager healthcare infrastructure-- are the only source of medical treatment for many Africans. Having few African sources of high quality, affordable medicines, missions and hospitals must often resort to pre-paying for bulk quantities of generic medicines purchased from India, China or Europe, which may spend months in transit exposed to temperature extremes, becoming ineffective or even unsafe.

We are living in what are widely acknowledged to be precarious global times. Deepening poverty, social and communal alienation and dislocation, environmental devastation, and violence are fast becoming global pandemics.

At nearly every level, once trusted social, political and economic institutions seem to be losing their ability to provide stability and direction for persons all over the globe. The large-scale social, economic, and political restructuring evident during recent decades have ushered in a time of intense competition among powerful institutions for the hearts, desires and dreams of persons and communities the world over.

Indeed, we have good cause for believing that we are in the midst of a struggle for the world's soul.

The ground for holistic health mission is fertile in Africa. Twenty-seven sub-Saharan states rank among the poorest in the world.

Since the early 1970's the world has been responding to Africa's famines along with natural and man-made disasters. However, Africa represents a minimal portion of the global economy and is therefore a neglected market.

Today, over 100,000 different drugs are being marketed around the world. Of these, the World Health Organization considers 270 drugs to be most essential. The movement toward rational drug use and essential drug lists is global and will rapidly spread as health conditions deteriorate. Governments, ministries of health, purchasing centers, hospitals, and health professionals will buy medicines from those suppliers who can provide the lowest cost essential drugs.

For these reasons a Christian medicines distribution organization that is located on the continent of Africa is critically needed. It must provide Christian hospitals affordable, quality medicines, delivered in a timely manner. In response to this need in 1997, AMFA Foundation launched a new ministry, Affordable Medicines for Africa. AMFA South Africa is based in Johannesburg.