A Nigerian based pharmaceutical company; Graham Foggs Limited has planned to bring down prices of commonly used drugs in Nigeria by 60 percent to enable poor Nigeria to have access to basic medical care.
Making the announcement today, Friday, when he led the executive board members of the company, on a courtesy visit to President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, chairman of the board, Chief Sam Nda-Isaiah, said that the company also planned to be producing only generic medicines as against patented ones.
Nda-Isaiah, who is both a pharmacist and newspaper publisher, vowed that the company will continue to make essential medicines and livestock drugs available to the public, at significantly reduced prices.
The chairman who lamented that over 70 percent of Nigerians have been identified as unable to afford modern medicines produced by multinational pharmaceutical companies due to their high prices, said that lowering the prices of drugs would be achieved without a single kobo subsidy from government, but with Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) or bulk raw materials imported from China and India for the approved local production companies in Nigeria.
He added that the finished products of the proposed low priced drugs would be sold at fixed prices, adding: “millions of jobs would be created across the country as pharmaceutical plants would be operating at near-maximum capacity, and this would be for medicines of all classes including livestock drugs to boost the agricultural sector. The price of every medicine, including those under the health insurance scheme, will come down.”
This was even as President Buhari directed the setting up of an inter-ministerial committee to fashion out how medicines and livestock drugs can be made available to the Nigerian public at a fraction of the prevailing prices.
He reiterated his commitment to the improvement of the quality of lives of Nigerians, as he charged the Ministers of Health as well as Agriculture and Rural Development to work with the pharmaceutical company on “short-circuit disruptive bureaucracy.”
Buhari had earlier in the life of his administration, reduced tariff on pharmaceutical raw materials, and increased the one for finished imported products, aimed at boosting and encouraging local production of medicines, for the benefit of ordinary Nigerians.
