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Nigerian local drug manufacturing companies can now compete favourably well with the pharmaceutical companies all over the world in the bidding process for medicines supply for relevant global health programmes, Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, said yesterday.

 

The minister made this known at a press conference on WHO Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Prequalification of three additional Nigerian local drug manufacturing companies in Abuja.

 

The three additional local drug manufacturer companies are: Evans Pharmaceutical Ltd, May & Baker Pharmaceutical Ltd and Chi Pharmaceutical Ltd.

 

The minister said WHO officially confirmed the three additional Nigerian pharmaceutical manufacturers having demonstrated acceptable levels of compliance with the WHO GMP after Audits/Inspections by WHO prequalification team.

 

According to the minister, Nigeria and West Africa had four pharmaceutical companies, including Swiss Pharm Nigeria Limited that joined other five pharmaceutical manufacturers in Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa) that were initially certified to produce medicines for malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other United Nations coordinated projects, including the UN Commission on Life Saving Commodities.

 

He added that by this laudable achievement, Nigeria is now among the nations of the world whose local drug industries manufacture according to and at WHO standards. The WHO GMP standard is the international norm and Nigeria has joined the world in this global phenomenon.

 

Professor Chukwu said the issue of the prequalification has been one of the major challenges of the Nigerian local drug industries and has been of great concern to the government because money and recourses were being lost by government for non-WHO prequalification of local drug manufacturing companies.

 

The minister said 11 companies started the journey and four has scaled through. He was optimist that the remaining seven will be prequalified soon, while others continue to aspire to join the league.

 

According to him, to attain the WHO prequalification is capital intensive and government is aware of the huge expenditure incurred by the local drug industry in the region of $600 million to prosecute the exercise.

 

He urged members of the public to patronise the local drug makers so that they will be able to pay up the debt they incurred.

 

The minister added that this is another landmark of the Transformation Agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan towards placing the Nigerian pharmaceutical sector on the global standard and towards enhancing good life and availability of quality medicines in the healthcare delivery system in Nigeria.

 

Source:

Dailynewswatch