By; AMOS TAUNA, Kaduna
A pharmacist in the country has urged the federal government to make local drug production a priority, as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark the World Health Day
Prof. Martins Emeje, the Director-General, Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (NNMDA), stated that President Bola Tinubu should be talking about cutting down the importation of foreign drugs, saying that the country has the infrastructure and human capital to produce drugs locally.
He noted that the strategy that the country has been using since the colonial time is what it is still saying that there is the need for a change of strategy.
According to the DG, the country cannot achieve a change in outcome if it continues with the same strategy, describing it as dependence on importation of pharmaceuticals.
He observed that it is what the country has been doing over the years by depending on support from other countries, saying that it is either the pharmaceutical sector is importing finished products or it imports raw materials and just package the dosage from here without necessarily doing any basic research and development or even local drug manufacturing.
According to him, “The problem is lack of investment in our own local development, local drug manufacturing, local research and development and manufacturing, and that is because we are not looking inward. We must support local drug research and development and local drug manufacturing.”
Prof. Emeje advocated on the need for the country to rethink indigenous medicines, believing that the country must begin to make it a priority.
According to him, the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency is working towards establishing herbal medicine centres in all the 774 local governments in the country, saying that the agency was already developing a database of all traditional medicine practitioners in the country and the type of products and services they render, for comprehensive documentation.
“We are starting it already with Alimosho local government. It’s a N500billion project that we are starting with Alimosho local government and we are going to use that as a pilot and escalate it to the rest of the country, ” he explained.
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