With the country’s health system already in a shambles, it risks further degeneration with the outbreak of coronavirus in China that is spreading globally like a harmattan fire. What makes the situation ominous for Nigeria is the fact that, besides its large import of medicines, active and non-active ingredients for drugs manufacturing are also heavily sourced from China and other countries.
The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Mojisola Adeyeye, triggered the alarm bell recently at an event organised ahead of the African Medicine Quality Forum. Nigeria imports 70 per cent of its drugs, while 90 per cent of raw materials for pharmaceuticals are also imported. This has made short work of the National Drug Policy, revised in 2005, that prescribes 70 per cent local production of drugs and 30 per cent import.
These lofty goals have never been accomplished. Adeyeye said, “The alarm I am sounding now is one (that) everybody should take seriously. We have drug insecurity because of the coronavirus. India is already feeling it because they buy most of their materials and active ingredients from China. If India is feeling it, we should start praying… We import almost everything, active and non-active ingredients, equipment and so on.” The World Health Organisation has already declared the disease a pandemic, having spread to 60 countries, mostly in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, with three cases in Africa so far. It has killed over 3,000 persons globally.
Apart from China, India, Pakistan and the United Kingdom form the biggest chain of drugs supply to Nigeria. Embarrassingly, many pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria have become mere marketers or distributors of drugs produced abroad. Following the agency’s dogged fight against fake drugs locally and abroad on the late Dora Akunyili’s watch, drugs manufactured in the country gained international acceptance. With increased demand, productive capacity invariably ramped up, increasing the country’s Gross Domestic Product. This should be the national target now. However, restoring this old order is not going to be easy, given what a former President, Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Ahmed Yakasai, described as the absence of a conducive environment for competitive manufacturing. This includes lack of infrastructure, multiple taxation and levies and high energy costs.
For the incumbent President of PSN, Sam Ohuabunwa, it is illusory for anyone to think that every product could be manufactured locally with the country’s obvious limitations in technology, capacity and the resources. He said, “It is cheaper to import medicines than to manufacture locally; every drug involves some active ingredients, and the process of importing each ingredient required for manufacturing is the same for the finished products… cost of production of medicines is too high, and locally manufactured drugs cannot compete with imported drugs.”
Faced with rocketing prices of drugs that endangered its healthcare delivery, the UK government acted swiftly in 2016. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health then, David Prior, came up with “The Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill,” which was used to have better control of the cost of medicines and voided “unreasonable price increases.” The Health Department said, “The government intends to use this power to limit the price of unbranded medicines where competition in the market fails and companies charge the NHS unreasonably high prices for generic medicines.”
Many stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry believe that this critical subsector of the economy could experience a turnaround if government could extend its interventionist programmes to it, spearheaded by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Through it, the textile and garments industry, palm oil production and rice farming have received a lifeline of sorts. The President, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Group, Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria, Okey Akpa, says that N300 billion is needed for pharmaceutical expansion and export funding. This fund, he stressed, should “be set aside and administered with an interest that will make it attractive for investment.” Most crucially, the regulatory regime should be revamped to enforce quality on local products and exports.
Indeed, a healthy population is crucial to a productive economy. For the country to be overwhelmingly reliant on other nations for its hospitals to be equipped with the necessary drugs to function calls for soul-searching and action. Therefore, since the pharmaceutical sector is among the five priority manufacturing subsectors with high potential for development in the short to medium term, for Nigeria’s industrial revolution, a key component of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, the Federal Government should not delay further in giving it a “Marshall Plan.” At present, only two out of five pharmaceutical companies accredited by WHO in Nigeria are still in operation. The other three have packed up due to a harsh business climate.
Unlike Nigeria, India is rapidly developing its pharmaceutical companies to the point that it produces between 20 and 22 per cent of the world’s generic drugs. Besides, it offers “60,000 finished medicines and nearly 400 bulk used in formulations,” says Abiola Shittu of the University of Ilorin. Beyond the urgency of the moment, Nigeria’s pharmaceutical sector is in dire need of government’s support. As things stand, it smacks of poverty of governance that a country whose population is estimated to be over 200 million depends strongly on other nations to provide it with basic drugs for its health care delivery to survive. A change of this narrative has become a necessity.
