[Role of an association in promoting pharmaceutical quality assurance: transfer of know-how based on the buddy system].

The pharmaceutical world is undergoing rapid and radical changes with increasing complexity. Countries with limited resources are particularly powerless faced to these changes that have had a particularly strong impact on their pharmaceutical systems. To achieve the level of performance required to ensure continuous supplies of quality pharmaceutical products, pharmaceutical systems must be organized on the basis of quality assurance principles that use change as a motor of development. Implementation of quality assurance schemes provides management tools for gathering and processing the information necessary to develop an infrastructure satisfying the demand for quality medicines. Organization of such systems must be based on process improvement. In this framework, associations specialized in such pharmaceutical quality assurance can play a special role. The Medico-Pharmaceutical Humanitarian Group (French acronym, CHMP) is a humanitarian association that provides personnel for development and action in health-related products. The mission of the CHMP is to assist procurement and distribution structures in developing countries to achieve sustainable development by transfer of technical know-how.