Anvisa announces changes after charging for modernization

The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) announced this month a profound organizational restructuring that includes even the adoption of a new bylaw. The alteration has already been published in the Union's Official Gazette under a resolution of the Collegiate Directorship No. 61.

The modernization came after a sequence of strong charges by Brazil's Minister of Agriculture, Kátia Abreu, who demanded “efficiency” and celerity at the procedures of evaluation and release of agrochemical registration. Even through there was an alert, the head of the Ministry trusted that the agency would review its bureaucracy.

"It is one of the results of the discussion and adjustments at the work procedures that the agency develops since 2009. It is a necessary evolution around the macro-procedures that guide the Anvisa action,” reads the statement of Anvisa.

"Throughout this time, Anvisa defined its major macro-procedures and remodeled the boards, leaving the individualized instances for each director and becoming formal organizational structures, responsible for the conduction of each macro-procedure. Among the changes, there is the extinction of the superintendents, strengthening the general managements, now the top interlocutors to the directors. The goal is to establish a clear flux between the decision-makers,” explains Anvisa.

The agency also announced the reorganization of some organizational units for a “greater balance between the Boards”: Board of Institutional Management, Board of Sanitary Regulation, Coordination and Articulation of the National System of Health Surveillance, Board of Authorization and Health Registration and Board of Control and Health Monitoring.

"The adjustments made around the Anvisa macro-procedures will help to guide the Anvisa action for a most precise response comparing to our mission. There are no abrupt or sudden changes, but necessary corrections thought within a long-term planning for Anvisa,” commented Jarbas Barbosa, president of the entity.