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The Federal Government has commissioned an
ultra-modern medical warehouse in Abuja
for storage of drugs and other medical commodities that it procured or
those donated by partners before final distribution to the end users.
Commissioning the facility on Monday, Prof. Isaac
Adewole, the Minister of Health, said that the facility, named ‘Premier Medical
Warehouse’ was a product of joint effort between the Federal Government and
partners.
“I want to declare publically that within this
country, I am yet to see facility like this, so I truly agree that this is the
work of our partnership”.
Adewole explained that there are three things that
constitute good health system, Human Resources, Drugs/ Commodities available in
the facility and Data emanating from the facility.
The three things are complementing one another and
it is only when the three are put to gather that a strong health system would
have been built.
“A facility that have human resources and there
are no commodities, people will go there only once, they are not likely to come
back, if there is no data you cannot really fine tune what is going on, you
cannot determine progress and so to me what we are doing is actually to put in
place a strong system that will deliver commodity in good qualities or in good
shape to our people”.
The Minister thanked the US Government and
Globalfund for supporting the project. He assured that the Ministry will work
with private stakeholders in the management of the facility. He said that the
facility in Abuja will take care of the northern part of the country while the
other one in Lagos would services the entire southern part of the Nigeria.
Adewole said “for us in the Ministry we would
ensure that we put all that is necessary to ensure that this facility is put to
use, we would advertise it, we would let people know and we would provide
oversight for the management”.
The Minister said that facility would also provide
opportunity for building capacity so that overtime, the Ministry would be able
to replicate it in other part of the country.
In his remark the US Mission Director in Nigeria,
Mr. Stephen Haykins said that the Premier Warehouse in Abuja and Lagos would
overcome the challenges of
warehousing and distribution of drugs in Nigeria.
