Due to Coronavirus and the fact that sizeable
proportion of the drugs come from China and India, and the difficulty in
trading with these countries, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, President, Pharmaceutical
Society of Nigeria (PSN) has urged the Nigerian governments to see the
imperative of investing heavily in research and production of local drugs. She
spoke with our source on the deadly disease ravaging countries of the world.
Excerpts:
Are we well prepared to contain the menace of
Coronanvirus now threatening humanity including Nigeria? Will you say we are
much better prepared with regards to the case of Ebola virus?
I believe that the level of preparedness should have
been better than it is now. The saving grace that we have is that we have had
an experience in managing crisis like this, which is the Ebola crisis. That has
given us residual experience, but beyond that we ought to have done a lot
better. I believe that when the first signs came, when the first news broke, I
expected that efforts should have been made especially with acquiring medical
equipment that would have been used for managing the illness.
We were certain that if such an epidemic had opened
the world that Nigeria was going to be part of it, given our level of
interaction with China. In fact, given our involvement with global trade and
the fact that Nigerians travel all over the world our level of preparedness
should have been better.
We need to be more proactive than we have been but I
think that the Ebola and some of the residual incidences have been helpful
here.
What
is your reaction to the FG’s clamping down of some pharmacy outlets, accusing
them of hiking prices of hand sanitisers and all that?
It doesn’t make sense; we are not a country with
controlled price regime. It is a free market and there is a natural market
response to scarcity, you can’t dictate it. When there is a high demand for any
product the price would change. It is standard; not only would it change from
the retail point, it would also change from the source, the producers,
manufacturers and even distributors.
So it is not the right thing to do to pursue people
and all that. We are not in a price controlled regime. Of course, as pharmacists
we have already advised our colleagues to do the utmost they can to ensure that
they do not profiteer from the misery and problem we are facing in the country.
The much we can do is moral persuasion. We cannot legislate it because the
response to demand everywhere in the world is that prices change when the
demand changes. So using consumer protection agency is very primitive in this
circumstance; you might even cause more problems.
Suppose the guys don’t even bring it to sell at all
because they are afraid you are going to come and hold them. We shouldn’t add
salt to injury. I think the issue is about increasing availability of the
product and this is why I said part of our preparation was lackluster.
We ought to have anticipated this. In America, they
have everything on ground; they didn’t wait for the issue to arise before
buying the masks and gloves.
So government ought to have anticipated this. The
pharmaceutical companies are primes right now as I speak to you based on advice
to increase production of these things but some of them don’t happen overnight.
What is worse is that the sizeable proportion of the materials we need come
from China and the counry has become a difficult place to trade and that has
complicated the issue a little bit.
What
role should the pharmaceutical companies play in providing some sort of moral
support?
I think that is the role all the professional
pharmacists should play. They should appreciate the fact that there are some of
the closest neighbours, first line of touch to many people who need medical
help and advice in many climes, not just in Nigeria. Therefore they take that
responsibility seriously. So one of the first advice we issued when I became
president was that no patient should be coming to your pharmacy without getting
an opportunity to interact with you. You shouldn’t sell a medicine because
someone asked for it. You must find out why the person needs the medicine and
know if it is OTC medicine. Even for OTC medicine, doctors may not prescribe
the medicine but you must talk to your pharmacist for every medicine, whether
it is ethical or OTC; you need the counseling for each one of them.
We have also asked them to get flyers that people can
take away so that they can be educated, even if what they came for didn’t have
to do with any infections at all. It is part of the primary duties, because
that pharmacist is the first line especially in primary health care.
There are serious concerns globally about finding a
cure for Coronavirus. Here in Nigeria, Prof. Umaru who is a virologist and head
of the BIO Resources Centre, claims that he has found a cure for it and I saw a
picture showing his meeting with the Minister of State for Health, the Minister
of Science and Technology and some other federal officials. Is the PSN involved
in this process of finding a cure?
First with due respect, research is slow in our
country and it is an expensive thing to do. Nigeria governments have not come
to the full realisation of the need to invest in research in our country. How
do I know? I have served in the board of several researches in Nigeria
including National Institution of Research and Development. If you walk into
that place, you will be sorry for the institution because the walls are broken,
not to talk of equipment or funding. It is a shame. Go to our universities;
there is not enough in research and development and so we have to depend on the
rest of the world; what a shame! But having said that, there are a few
pharmaceutical companies with due respect and modesty, mine included, doing
research and development.
NEIMETH was the first pharmaceutical company to come
up with local remedy for sickle cell anemia which is one of the neglected
diseases of the black man. And in this other area we are in, Professor Maurice
Iwu who is in the board of NEIMETH Pharmaceuticals right from when he was in
the universities and after we have related with him because he is a research
guy and even when he was in the United States we have tried to develop some of
his work to bring them to market. So we are working with him on these other
areas and we are asking that the government should show more interest because
investment in research is a long term. And what does it take, first is that for
every product that comes to the market, you have spent about 500 million
dollars to get a product to the market; 10 others have failed after you spent
so much money on them.
The reason is that, first you have to go through
several trials, Phase 1 and Phase 2 etc. The moment you realise that the
product is effective you then have to prove its effectiveness. You then have to
prove it effectively. If it is very effective and unsafe then you can’t use.
There must be a balance where the effectiveness overrides the safety. So you do
Phase 1 to Phase 4, starting from lower animals like rats and cats and then you
move to human being. When you get to human being you do trials, control
clinical trials, no matter how good the medication is.
The product can be useful on day one but on day 50
it could cause you problem. You will have to allow the product a number of days
to see its shorter and longer medium toxicity. Even when a product is in the
market, there is what we call post long surveillance pharmaceutical vigilance.
You are still monitoring the efficacy and side effects because some of them
show up at chronic injection, not at acute injection and that is why National
Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and those agencies
set up surveillance for these things.
Many
of world ingredients came from China. Now India is saying they may not be able
to serve more export, what does that portend for Nigeria?
Well, it is a wake-up call for us. I just wish that
Nigeria will just listen and take a cue. In this country where there is a lot
of flora and fauna that have pharmaceutical uses; indeed what they bring out of
China exist here. It a matter of processing them and put them in manner that
they can be marketed.
We have the potential to build up a formidable
pharmaceutical subsector, building from areas of competence and areas of
endowment that is manufacture medicines from things that are available in our
clime. We don’t need to go to China, but the point is that pharmaceutical
companies need to go to the bank to borrow money at double digit. Then you
invest it in ten years or five years of research and the research is not
bringing in money; it may even fail. So part of the reason why our companies
with due modesty haven’t done as well as others is that we are investing in
research. You take short term money and put in long term investment, it doesn’t
work like that.
So every once in a while you feel like you are
burning your fingers. The sustainability of every pharmaceutical anywhere in
the world is innovation, research and development. So, I think that our Nigeria
should take a decision now because there will be another virus. I don’t know
the name and I am not prophesying. Why don’t we start preparing now, get the pharmaceuticals
and give them a mandate, get the teaching hospitals, industries and give them a
mandate so that by the time the next illness breaks we would have got some
level of preparedness of what medications to use.
Comments
Post a Comment