Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has expressed the federal government’s commitment to improve access to healthcare and reduce reliance on imported pharmaceutical products.
The minister stated this at the High-Level Stakeholder Dialogue to Address the Technology Gaps in Nigeria’s Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Sectors, with the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), in Abuja.
He said “This high level dialogue brings together relevant stakeholders to synthesise ideas and solutions for the robust and contextual strategies that will expedite technology transfer for local manufacturing of medicine and vaccines.
“This approach will provide a strong foundation that support harnessing of local capacity to meet the health care needs of the population. The intervention also stimulates local research and development activities for pharmaceuticals and other healthcare commodities.”
According to the minister, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigeria, like many other African countries, was affected due to inability to manufacture vaccines locally.
He said in the light of this, the Federal Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, went ahead to develop a vaccine policy in order to be proactive in achieving sustainable local manufacturing of vaccines.
“This development of this epoch of making policy was undertaken alongside critical actors in the healthcare space and will be fit and proper response to the lack of access Nigeria and other similarly disadvantaged nations suffered during two vaccines. Pressure analysis probably did, again landscape during the COVID 19 pandemic .
“In order to ensure that the objective of the vaccine policy are achieved expeditiously the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development led the development of a national plan for policy, research and development and local production.
“That is the first of such empirical intervention that holistically explores vaccine research, development and manufacturing in this part of the world.”
