By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jul 22 1997 (IPS)

The bowl delicately balanced on Mojisola Bolaji’s head is laden with an array of bottles and packets that contain anything from vitamins to analgesics and cough syrups.

Bolaji is an itinerant vendor and her clients are poor people who cannot afford the high fees charged by hospitals. “People call me ‘Doctor’ because I prescribe for them,” she tells IPS. “When I listen to their complaints, I give them the tablets or capsules that can cure their sickness. My prescriptions have been effective hence the patronage.”

“My drugs are cheap, you don’t need to go to hospital to be healed,” she adds.

Consultations cost at least 50 naira in public hospitals and from 300 to 500 in private ones. (The U.S. dollar exchanges at 83 naira at the official rate.) To gain admission to a hospital, patients need to deposit from 2,500 to 6,000 naira, depending on the institution.

As a result, many poorer Nigerians depend on ‘doctors’ such as Bolaji. But she and many other hawkers obtain their medicines from the open markets that abound here. These, in turn, are supplied by fake manufacturers or importers who allegedly bring in cheap, substandard medicines.

Medical practitioners are worried by the situation. “Because of fake drugs and self-medication by these people, it has become difficult for hospitals to treat some simple ailments when such patients are eventually brought to us,” says Sola Olagunju, a doctor in a private hospital here.

Over the years, the abundance of fake and adulterated drugs in this West African nation of more than 100 million people has led to calls for stricter enforcement of penalties on the importers and manufacturers of such products.

But a recent disclosure by the Nigerian Food and Drugs Control Agency (NAFDAC) that about 1.9 billion naira worth of fake drugs had been seized in the past three years has sparked a controversy here, with pharmacists fearing that it might hamper the country’s exports — most other West African nations buy their medicines from Nigerian drug firms.

“The statement by NAFDAC may trigger off another round of banning of drugs from the country by other nations, especially the West African sub-region,” the Lagos State branch of the Pharmaceautical Society of Nigeria (PSN) said in a statement.

The PSN recalled that a few years ago, when the then health minister announced that more than 70 percent of medicines circulating in the country were fake, other sub-regional countries banned Nigerian drugs.

“This unfortunate development led to colossal losses on the part of many Nigerian drug manufacturers and exporters, thus stifling the growth rate of the pharmaceutical industry,” the PSN said. “Some of these countries … have only recently began to revoke the ban clamped on Nigeria.”

The PSN charged that the statement by NAFDAC’s Task Force on Fake drugs was an exaggeration capable of conveying the wrong signals. “We are worried that such unproven claims might further jeopardise the gradual success so far achieved in instilling confidence in other countries, particularly in the West African sub-region, about made-in-Nigeria drugs,” it said.

Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Salihu Ibrahim, who now chairs a pharmaceutical company in Owerri, Eastern Nigeria, agreed with the PSN. He, however, wondered how NAFDAC would be able to cope with the “huge influx of all sorts of drugs from all over the world, since Nigeria is seen as a favourable dumping ground”.

While agreeing that some of the drugs are produced locally but illegally, Salihu noted that most are imported. He suggested a ban on imported medicines that can be manufactured locally as a first step towards stemming the increasing problem of fake drugs.

Some pharmacists advocate mass enlightenment campaigns by health personnel to make people aware of the dangers fake drugs pose. Others say the menace can be checked if the prescribed penalties are imposed.

People convicted of importing or distributing fake drugs can be sentenced to between five and eight years in jail but the law has not been effectively enforced, according to the PSN.

“Imposition of the maximum penalty on importers and manufacturers of fake products and its enforcement as well as the formation of effective consumer associations are the only solutions to the problem of distribution and consumption of fake products,” says Daniel Akoh, president of the Institute of Public Analysis of NIgeria (IPAN)

“If the consumers come together they can mount pressure on the appropriate government agencies to ensure quality products, especially drugs,” adds Akoh, whose institute was established in 1992 by chemists, bio-chemists, pharmacists, microbiologists, food scientists and laboratory technologists.

At least one state, Oyo in the west, has moved to curb the distribution of bogus medicines. Its government recently banned the hawking of drugs in buses and market places and set up a task force to monitor the activities of the itinerant vendors.

“The duty of the task force, headed by a senior military officer, is not only to hunt for fake drugs but also to ensure that genuine drugs are sold by only licensed persons in approved places,” said Titi Ipadeola, Oyo state’s Commissioner of Health.

He warned that the penalties for distributing fake drugs would be strictly enforced in the state.

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