The Women Behind the Journey from Medicine Innovation to Patient Access

Women in Pharma: How regulatory and quality leadership helps bring innovative medicines to South African patients

Women make up an estimated 70% of the global healthcare workforce, yet only 25% occupy senior leadership positions.¹ While progress is being made, women remain underrepresented in senior roles across STEM industries globally.

At Novartis South Africa, where women account for more than 80% of the leadership team, deliberate efforts are being made to advance women into strategic and decision-making roles.

But leadership in healthcare is not only about who sits at the decision-making table. It is also about the expertise and responsibility required to ensure that innovation ultimately reaches the people it is designed to help.

For Kumeshnie Padayachee, Head of Regulatory Affairs and Responsible Pharmacist, and Charmaine Ford, Head of Quality Assurance at Novartis South Africa, that responsibility sits at the heart of their work.

Their roles may operate largely behind the scenes, but they are critical to the journey of innovative medicines from development to patient access. Through regulatory strategy, quality systems and rigorous compliance, they help ensure that medicines meet the required standards of safety, quality and efficacy before reaching patients.

Creating pathways from innovation to patients

For Padayachee, bringing innovative medicines to patients goes beyond navigating regulatory requirements. It is about creating pathways that enable access to treatments that have the potential to change lives.

With more than a decade of experience at Novartis, Padayachee provides strategic leadership at the intersection of science, policy and patient access. Her role involves translating complex clinical and scientific evidence into regulatory strategies that support timely approvals while ensuring that submissions and processes align with South Africa's rigorous standards for safety, quality, efficacy and ethical conduct.

This requires close collaboration with health authorities, internal cross-functional teams and external stakeholders. It also means anticipating regulatory requirements, identifying potential barriers to access and helping innovation move responsibly through the healthcare system.

In an evolving and increasingly complex healthcare environment, this balance is critical. Regulatory leadership must help accelerate access without compromising the standards and trust on which the healthcare system depends.

“Every regulatory decision we make ultimately comes back to a patient waiting for a treatment that could change their life. My role is to ensure that we bring innovative medicines to patients as quickly as possible, while never compromising on the safety, quality, and integrity they deserve,” says Padayachee.

*Where quality builds trust * If regulatory affairs helps create the pathway for medicines to reach patients, quality assurance helps ensure that patients can trust what reaches them.

Ford, Head of Quality Assurance at Novartis South Africa, has spent more than 25 years at Novartis and has built her career across regulatory affairs and quality leadership. This experience has given her a broad perspective of the healthcare ecosystem and the systems required to maintain confidence in medicines.

Today, Ford leads efforts to ensure medicines meet stringent quality, safety and regulatory standards.

For her, quality is not simply a compliance requirement. It is fundamental to patient confidence.

Through robust quality systems and manufacturing practices, Ford and her team work to ensure medicines are consistently controlled to the required standards, helping to reduce risks and protect the integrity of every treatment.

“Quality isn't simply a checkpoint in the journey of a medicine, it is a commitment to every patient who places their trust in us,” says Ford. “Behind every process, every standard and every decision is a patient relying on that medicine to improve or save their life. That responsibility inspires us to continually uphold the highest standards and never lose sight of the people we serve.”

Connecting innovation with impact

The journeys of Padayachee and Ford illustrate an often-overlooked part of healthcare innovation.

Scientific breakthroughs may begin in laboratories, but they only create meaningful impact when they can be translated into safe, quality-assured medicines that patients can access and trust.

That journey requires collaboration across regulatory, scientific, quality and healthcare ecosystems. It also requires leaders who can navigate complexity while keeping patients at the centre of decision-making.

“Leadership is about creating possibilities for others. In healthcare, that means helping ensure that innovative medicines move beyond the laboratory and into the hands of the patients whose lives they have the potential to change,” says Padayachee.

Ford adds: “Every patient deserves absolute confidence in the medicines they receive. Quality is how we earn that trust—through every process, every decision, and every standard we uphold. It is a responsibility we carry with pride because behind every medicine is a life that matters.”

Their perspectives highlight an important connection between innovation, access, quality and trust. These are not competing priorities; together, they create the conditions for healthcare innovation to deliver sustainable patient impact.

*Women shaping the future of healthcare * This Women's Month, the stories of Padayachee and Ford offer a glimpse into the many roles women play in advancing healthcare in South Africa.

Their contributions extend beyond their individual positions. Through regulatory expertise, quality leadership and a commitment to patient safety, they help create the conditions in which healthcare innovation can move from an idea to a treatment that makes a difference in people's lives.

As Padayachee reflects, “True innovation is not measured by the medicines we discover, but by the lives we are able to improve.”

For Ford, that impact depends on maintaining the trust that patients place in the healthcare system.

Together, their stories demonstrate that behind every innovative medicine reaching a patient is a network of people making careful, informed decisions — and women are playing an increasingly important role in ensuring that innovation, quality and patient trust go hand in hand.