Rita Karam, Pharm.D., Ph.D.: 2017 Speaker Record

The former Cold Chain Global Forum website had a speaker page at /rita-karam-pharmd-phd-speaker. A ministry announcement from 2017 linked to it. This page records only what public sources say about her participation in that one event.

Verified facts

• On 22 August 2017 the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) announced that Dr. Rita Karam would represent the ministry at the 15th Annual Global Forum for Temperature Controlled Life Science Supply Chains, to be held in Chicago in September 2017. [1]
• The announcement placed her participation within the ministry’s Quality Assurance of Pharmaceutical Products Program, which it said she headed, and its Good Storage and Distribution Practices of Pharmaceutical Products Program. [1]
• The announcement named technical consultant Christelle Fransawi as attending with her. [1]
• The announcement gave the title of her talk as “LEBANON: Reviewing the Lebanese Ministry of Health’s GSDP National Guidelines to Ensure Preserved Quality and Identity of Pharmaceutical Products during Storage & Transport”. [1]
• The announcement linked to the forum’s speaker page for her and to the forum’s agenda page. [1]
• The 2017 event brochure listed her as “Pharm.D., Ph.D.” and as Quality Assurance of Pharmaceutical Products Program Director, Lebanese Ministry of Health, and listed Christelle Fransawi as Technical Member of the same ministry. [2]
• The brochure placed the session on its International Focus Day page for Friday 29 September 2017. Its four listed discussion points covered preventing counterfeit products entering the market, documentation and infrastructure for a quality management system covering ambient and temperature-sensitive products, the ministry’s three-year GSDP certification process and auditing requirements, and an update on GDP regulation in the MENA region. [2]
• The brochure also included her among the speakers it grouped as “2017 Thought Leaders”. [2]

Additional detail from the sources

• The ministry’s announcement was dated 22 August 2017, about five weeks before the forum opened on 25 September 2017. [1][2]
• The two sources name the ministry differently. The announcement came from the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, and the brochure used “Lebanese Ministry of Health”. The record treats them as the same body because the speaker, the program and the talk title match. [1][2]
• The talk title contains the abbreviation GSDP, and the announcement named the ministry’s Good Storage and Distribution Practices of Pharmaceutical Products Program next to the Quality Assurance program. [1]
• The announcement’s text invited all interested people to take part by checking the event agenda, and it linked to the forum’s /agenda-mc address. [1]
• The International Focus Day fell on Friday 29 September 2017, the last day of the five-day week. [2]

Reading the two sources together

The announcement gives the context and the title. The brochure gives the placement and four discussion points. The two agree on the person, her program and the topic, and neither describes the content of the guidelines. [1][2] The brochure was a pre-event document, so the session may not have run exactly as printed, and no recording, slides or after-event report was found. Her role is recorded as stated in 2017.

Source material and scope

What exists: a ministry announcement dated 22 August 2017, which also states the event location and month, and the 2017 event brochure, which gives the session placement and discussion points. The brochure is undated; the host reports a July 2017 file date, and its attribution to the organizer rests on the names signed on its cover letter.

What is missing: the original speaker page (no archived copy was found), any biography text it contained, any slides or recording of the talk, and confirmation from the speaker or the ministry. Her position is recorded as described in 2017 and may have changed. This page does not describe the content of the Lebanese guidelines.

For the wider agenda context, see the agenda records for 2016 and 2017.

How this record connects to other archive pages

The talk sat inside a week documented in the 2016 and 2017 agenda records, where the same ministry announcement cites the agenda address. The day before the International Focus Day is recorded in the Day Two record, which lists the sessions and roundtables printed for Thursday 28 September.

The 2015 speakers record is a comparable list of speakers with regulatory titles. The ministry announcement and the brochure are in the historical resource index, and the archive home links to all records.

Editorial analysis: why these topics still matter

The Editorial Desk has not reviewed the Lebanese guidelines, and nothing in this analysis states what the speaker said. It starts from the talk title and the four discussion points.

The title names storage and transport together. That pairing is a reminder that a medicine’s temperature exposure begins before a shipment is built and continues after it is delivered. The discussion points on a quality management system for ambient and temperature-sensitive products and on certification and auditing concern how a site and its processes are documented and audited. The guide on warehouse dispatch covers the dispatch end of that chain, including pick verification, logger start, documents and carrier handover.

The guide on pharmaceutical packout covers how product documentation leads to the packout procedure and equipment. Questions about proving that a storage area holds a range belong to a different exercise, covered in the guide on mapping versus monitoring, which separates mapping a space from monitoring a shipment. A buyer who needs to know what a national guideline requires today should read the authority’s current publication; a 2017 session title cannot answer that.

Editorial reconstruction note

This page was prepared by the Cold Chain Practice Editorial Desk from the public sources listed above. DeltaSpark and Cold Chain Practice are not affiliated with IQPC or the organizers of the former event. There is no registration and no current event. Dr. Karam and the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health are not authors, advisers, partners or endorsers of this site, and the ministry has not reviewed this page.