Pharmacists demand details of executive order to crash drug prices
Pharmacists in the country have demanded details of the executive order the Federal Government plans to sign to bring down the cost of drugs in Nigeria, which has been on the rise.
According to them, knowing the details of the order will determine if the directive will help to crash drug prices in the country.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, on February 28 at a press briefing in Abuja, said the Federal Government would soon issue an executive order to curb escalating drug prices in the country.
Pate explained that the executive order was a short-term solution to halt the galloping prices of drugs.
He explained that the Federal Government’s mid to long-term solution involved the domestication of imported drugs within the next three years in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.
However, pharmacists say the details of the executive order will determine if the directive will bring down the prices of drugs.
A former President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria and former presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2023 general elections, Sam Ohuabunwa, said the details of the order needed to be assessed to know whether the order would help to reduce the prices of drugs in the country.
Ohuabunwa, who is a former Chief Executive Officer of Neimeth Pharmaceuticals, said, “You don’t judge a book by its cover; it is when you see the details of what the executive order will contain, that is when we can assess it. All I can say is that anything that can help make drugs much more affordable and accessible to Nigerian patients will be encouraged.
“I don’t know how it will be done, because if we are in a country where we do coordinated purchases and the government buys the drugs, it might be something you can easily say how it will happen, but I presume this might apply to government hospitals or government institutions. It may be an order to reduce the cost so that the government can subsidise the cost.
“In the private sector, I don’t know how it is going to work, and it is until we see what the order contains that we can know how effective it is.”
Also, a former President of the Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria, Dr. Lolu Ojo, said the details of the executive order would determine its effectiveness.
Ojo, who is also a fellow of the PSN, said, “All we have heard so far are promises; when the details come out, we will be able to say what will happen. The order is directed towards reducing the cost of drugs, we remain optimistic that the government will come out with something good but for now, we don’t know the details, so we can’t say.
“We need to know if the order will state that the government will buy the drugs and then sell them at reduced rates or the government will approach those who are selling now and offer them certain incentives that will reduce the cost of drugs. So, until we know the details of the order we can’t say what will happen.”
Ojo, however, stated that the government needed to ensure that drug manufacturers and importers get the drugs at reasonable rates to reduce the prices of drugs.
“One of the reasons for the high price of drugs is the foreign exchange because most of the things we use are imported, the whole products, which constitute about 80 per cent of our national consumption, are imported, even the components of what we manufacture are imported. Even active pharmaceutical ingredients and mercenaries are imported.
“Once the rate is affected, everything is affected, the import duty goes high, the unit rates go up. So, that is the problem. The government needs to make the industry more dynamic,” he said.
