Encouraging local drug production essential to health – Opaluwah
Samson Opaluwah, an engineer, directed procurement at the federal health ministry, before joining the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs in same capacity. In this interview, he speaks on the need to encourage local pharmaceutical companies in drug production to help boost the health indices in the country and activities that led to his recognition by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN) and other issues. Excerpts:
you were given an award recently by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN). What motivated the honour?
The award by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN), that is a group of manufacturers association that have factories producing drugs and medicaments for the Nigerian society, reviewed their performances over the past few years and decided to honour some public and civil servants who have impacted on their operations and successes. They considered that my tenure as director of procurement at the Federal Ministry of Health was very beneficial to their industry and group of manufacturers association of Nigeria which was why they honoured me.
In what ways can you say you contributed to their work and successes to deserve such recognition?
During the award ceremony, they cited the fact that before I came in 2010 on my duty tour to the Ministry of Health as the director of procurement, they were not receiving orders from the ministry but during my tenure, manufacturers were given preference because of the multiplier effects on our economy.
For instance, people who establish industries employ people, they help not only to produce drugs for the Nigerian society and government to buy, but they also employ our people. So when we patronise them, they employ people, the pressure on government regarding employment is reduced and there is also the multiplying effect that they buy the raw materials for their drugs from other smaller companies within our economy that also employ people within the country.
Why is it that we don’t see much of our locally produced drugs in Nigeria like
those foreign ones?
Well, let me say that, that may not be strictly correct. What is happening is that, the bulk of the drugs that you find in the pharmacy are actually Nigeria produced drugs but we also find that there are imported drugs for one reason or the other. There are people who are also into the business of importing and selling drugs, so those ones, the law does not stop them from doing that.
And of course it shouldn’t stop them from doing that but what the ministry intended to achieve during that period was not to patronise imported drugs but that the local manufacturers should be given patronage and preference first.
What is the percent of patronage for locally produced drugs compared to the imported ones?
Well, the procurement act has indicated a preference. Once it is indicated in the advert that local manufacturers are preferred, there are scores that give advantage to local manufacturers. It is not as if we give a particular percentage because a competitive and transparent procurement act has to be complied with whether you are local or foreign. But there is an advantageous scoring for local manufacturers allowed by the act if indicated in the advert.
How were you able to handle the issue of fake drugs when you were at the Ministry of Health as procurement director?
The Ministry of Health during my tenure did not have any incidence of fake drugs why that is so was because the drugs, that are manufactured locally must comply with NAFDAC first before they are accepted in the store, NAFDAC registration and all other criteria are mandatory requirements before the receipt of those drugs are allowed into the store. But in a society just like every other loopholes, people might import drugs that are not up to standard and infiltrate the system. That is why government has put in place measures to ensure fake drugs are checked.
What are the effect of fake drugs on people and what is the implications for those who abuse drugs?
Doctor will tell you that there is a lot of drug abuse in our system by people carrying out self medications. By the time you have gotten your system corrupted by various drugs, some of the drugs that could actually attend to ailment will not work because you have done a lot of damage to your system.
Some activities of NAFDAC are checking this problem. There is an advert running on the television that says when you get certain drugs you clean up some part and send a text for confirmation to see if it is genuine or not. The medical doctors who are in charge of their own clinic should be more vigilant because in a federal system, measures are taken before receiving drugs into the store.
It is very difficult to get a fake drug in because of the certification that must be met before we receive it but in a private clinic, they have to help the society by not just lamenting but put things in place to check and confirm that the drugs they are buying into their system are actually coated drugs that have been cleared by NAFDAC.
Government has set up measures using NAFDAC, so the private sector should use them to check for fake drugs, and also look toward drugs that are produced locally. We can really police that one and that is why you find that the drugs that you can buy in pharmacy that are locally produced hardly have fake ones.
But it is the imported ones that are counterfeited and brought it because of the porous nature of our borders which is one of the reasons NAFDAC may not be able to arrest them.
But at the dispensing end, we also have a responsibility to ensure that what we buy is correct. Somebody cannot go on his or her own to buy fake drugs. Unqualified medicine sellers and drugs peddlers in the motor should be discouraged because that is how fake drugs get into the system. We need to cooperate with government: National Orientation Agency should come into this matter, people should be told that swallowing drugs is not just it, one need to know what drug to swallow and where to get them so that the ailment can be attended to.
What about people in the rural areas that do not have all these information’s on the effect of fake drugs, how would they be aware of the danger and guide against it?
Local authorities should take the responsibilities of primary health care seriously. All of us come from rural areas except some people who are privileged to have been born in urban centres but in the 50s and 60s when we were growing up, there was no issue of travelling miles to get medications. So we need to go back to what we were doing that was effective. Primary health care and prevention, for a start. Today our neighbourhood are clumsy with waste. We will first of all generate the illness then we will be looking for solution. The sanitary inspectors are no longer there, if they are there, they are not doing their work. These are the things that create all this illness we are saying.