How PHN, PMG-MAN plan to raise capacity of pharmaceuticals
Nigeria will witness one of the biggest events in the pharmaceutical industry on May 25, 2017. It is the day the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN) and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers Association of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN) will hold a forum in Abuja to brainstorm on how to raise the capacity of local drug makers and make medicines available for Nigerians.
Tagged ‘Improving Access to Medicines: the Imperatives of Local Manufacturing and Effective Supply Chain Management’, the forum is expected to deepen the debate regarding the most effective and efficient strategies that will ensure sustainable access to affordable and high-quality medicines for the Nigerian population.
It provides an opportunity for local drug makers and other key stakeholders in the public and private sectors to come together and learn more about local pharmaceutical industry, its current challenges, including hiccups in the supply chain, and to discuss how government can create an enabling environment to boost the capacities of existing manufacturers and attract new players into the space.
The forum is expected to avail regulators an opportunity to understand why an enabling environment is most necessary for drug makers at this point when many countries, including Brazil and India, place much emphasis on medicines security.
Nigeria’s pharmaceutical is indisputably in turmoil as capacity utilisation remains below 40 percent at the moment. The industry is characterised by big multinationals that have local facilities in the country but produce and import from other countries.
The major players, represented by PMG-MAN, have local plants and manufacture medicines in the country. Critical issues such as poor power supply, lack of clean and affordable water, unbridled drug importation, lack of functional petrochemical plants (from which to get inputs) and inconsistent policies continue to nail them.
These issues will be in the front burner at the forum that will also attract key private sector leaders such as Aliko Dangote, Jim Ovia, Muhammad Ali Pate, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, and Sola David-Borha, among others, who founded the PHN to save a million lives each year through innovations.
Analysts believe that the presence of these business leaders could unlock capital for local drug manufacturing and facilitate aggressive local input sourcing. For instance, Aliko Dangote’s petrochemical plant, which will come up in one or two years, is expected to leverage some major raw materials for pharmaceutical companies in the country, hence his presence is key not only in the area of supporting capital but also in ensuring medicines availability.
At a pre-forum press conference held last week in Lagos, Obi Adigwe, executive secretary, Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers Association of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN), said the event would bring forward issues such as insights from the implementation of best practices in supply chain management, stories of successful public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements in supply chain management for health commodities and a tour of made-in-Nigeria medicines exhibition.
“The pharmaceutical industry is the only sector that can ensure availability of medicines. If you prioritise pharma, it means every policy that comes up will take pharma seriously,” Adigwe said.
He said the industry was already sourcing almost 50 percent of raw materials locally and was targeting 70 percent in no time.
He stated that evidence showed that drugs made in Nigeria were cheaper than imported ones as local manufacturers were absorbing costs.
“What we also do is to pool our resources togather and approach someone like Dangote and say,’we want to buy 200 tons of sugar, instead of buying at N25,000, let’s pay N19,000,” he stated the pharmaceuticals’ survival strategy.
Muntaqa Umar-sadiq, CEO of Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN), said the two institutions would bring complimentary skills to the table to reduce the needless deaths of women and children, caused by lack of access to life-saving medicines.
Umar-sadiq said the PHN specialised in bringing private sector resources and techniques to support the health sector, adding that the organisation set up the Africa Resource Centre for supply chain in partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He stressed the need to bring down Nigeria’s pharma spend of 15 to 20 percent to five percent as obtained in other countries.
ODINAKA ANUDU