As prices of drugs soar in Nigeria, the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa on Thursday in Lagos said the federal government is working on drastic measures to end the long sufferings of Nigerians in the hands of multinational pharmaceutical companies.
Alausa who spoke in Lagos during the commissioning of the Federal Medical Centre, Ebute Metta, Lagos’s Clinical building traced the current crisis in the pharmaceutical sector to the activities of pharmaceutical companies who come into our country only to market their products without investing in the sector.
The Minister, who said the problem did not start recently, said the present government has inherited it from previous governments.
He said: “The problem we’ve had is that we’ve let these pharmaceutical companies come into our country. Even in their country, they do things differently. When a company comes in, they give them licenses. You can only market for five years. After five years, you are supposed to manufacture all those drugs in the country. But we just know these multinational companies come in freely. And 20 years after, 30 years after, they’re still marketing. They have not contributed to the development of the country. That’s the problem. We’re going to be busy to change that.”
He said the government will be making new laws and policies, adding that if it means President Bola Ahmed signing an executive order, he will do that to end the suffering of Nigerians.
“We have to make some new laws, some new government policies. And if the president has to sign an executive order, trust me on this, he will do that.”
He said in the interim, the government is currently talking to the local pharmaceutical providers to see what they can do.“Today, I’ll be visiting the federal laboratory in Yaba. We’re trying to convert it to a lab that we can do bioequivalence.
“These are things we need to bring API to get pharmaceutical companies to start making drugs and using activated pharmaceutical products here. Right now, a lot of the things we have is finished pharmaceutical products in our country. So it’s a kind of solution that we’re putting in place,” he stated.
He insisted that President Tinubu wants sustainable, doable, comprehensive healthcare for Nigerians, adding that he the President wants to fix the healthcare system and is working, deploying his time, and resources of the country into our healthcare system.
