Ademola Oladigbolu, the National Chairman of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN), has said that more people are dying every day because of the rising cost of drugs, and the government is not doing enough to stop it.

Oladigbolu said this in an interview with The PUNCH on Sunday.

Following the exit of some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria at the end of 2023, Nigerians have groaned under ridiculous hikes in drug prices.

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“People are already dying. There is one drug used by epileptic patients and a pack of it is N65,000. That is a drug that someone who has epilepsy must take daily, non-stop. How much does such a person need to have to be able to maintain that?” Oladigbolu asked.

“So, the price of drugs is keeping people in the hospital. The way the government is investing in the refinery because petroleum cuts across everywhere is the same way they should encourage the production of pharmaceutical starch so that there will be encouragement for pharmaceutical production in Nigerian companies.

“According to NAFDAC, 70 percent of what we use in Nigeria are imported, but I will tell you that even from the 30 percent that we manufacture locally, we still depend on foreign exchange to bring in the active pharmaceutical ingredients to make those drugs in tablets and capsules.

“The instability in forex is affecting the pharmaceutical sector. There is global scarcity for some of the medicines too because some of the countries and industries have yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. So, we have a tree factor that is driving the instability and availability of medicine in our sector.”

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Oladigbolu said that the Federal Government of Nigeria had launched numerous initiatives to improve healthcare delivery and pharmaceutical regulations only to abandon them.

The pharmacist pointed out how the government also failed to implement any workable solution to the rising cost of healthcare and a booming counterfeit drug market.

“You will remember that there is a national drug prescription policy of the Federal Government, and the government came out openly to say that there is a flow chart for the distribution of medicine in Nigeria. The government’s plan for the enforcement of that was lacking,” Oladigbolu explained.

“… they made a pronouncement as to the discontinuation of the open-door market in Nigeria, which the government itself has failed to adhere to, but a lack of continuity is a major problem in re-crafting the health sector in Nigeria. It is a very great problem. Many policies have been abandoned and some are just on the table without implementation.

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“There are many solutions to the high prices of drugs, but one solution stands out. The Federal Government is not paying adequate attention to it because people are paying out of pocket. The idea is that if I’m sick, I will look for money and buy my drugs no matter what the price is, especially if I can afford it, but the greater solution lies in National Health Insurance. Let the government start the National Health Insurance where everybody pays a token. When you’re sick, you will just go to the hospital and the community pharmacy to get the prescriptions.

“If the Federal Government starts that, all of us will not know what the drug prices are. If it is the Federal Government paying for those drugs, we will know the right thing to do, and they will do it because what is happening right now is that there are many things to be done, but we have not seen movement in that direction.

“One major thing that I keep emphasising is that it is the open-door market. Even if the Federal Government removes tariffs today, prices of medicine will not come down because there is a collusive oligopoly in the open-door market. They control the prices of drugs in Nigeria. Without abolishing that open-door market, we cannot have a reduction in the prices of drugs.”

Oladigbolu has proposed a reduction of tariffs for the importation of raw pharmaceutical materials and finished medicines.

He also insisted on close monitoring of the open-door market system to prevent undue exploitation of drug prices by a monopoly.