Owing to the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 scourge, Dr. Anthony Ikeme, the President, Nigerian Association of Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Scientists in the America’s (NAPPSA), has appealed to the Federal Government to develop and execute a blueprint for the economic development of the pharmaceutical industry in Nigeria.
He made this appeal when he delivered a keynote address on ‘Advancing Industrial Pharmacy Sector in a Volatile Economy,’ at the 23rd Annual National Conference of the Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria which held in Kano yesterday.
According to the NAPPSA President, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the inherent weaknesses in the nation’s health care system. To this end, the blueprint is not only long overdue; it has become much more imperative.
Furthermore, he noted that the country’s greatest failure might be the lack of an actively executed National Strategy for Nigeria’s Pharmaceutical Economic Sector Development. Hence, the country must come up with a deliberate and actively executed National Strategy for Pharmaceutical Economic Sector Development; as this is very vital.
In his words: “The Nigerian pharma market is a market for foreign products with almost total dependence on imports from China and India worth an estimated $600m yearly. We must robustly and efficiently deploy all facets of our national human resource asset and machinery towards achieving our national pharmaceutical sector strategy”.
Rounding up, he explicated that the development and execution of the blueprint will aid the country in developing a strong and internationally competitive pharmaceutical sector that could take advantage of the coronavirus-induced global supply deficiencies.
InlandTown! 2020
