Fidson, Chi, M&B in bid for WHO’s N20bn drug budget

      The World Health Organisation (WHO) is set to pre-qualify five Nigerian pharmaceutical firms, Evans Pharmaceuticals, SWIPHA, CHI Pharmaceuticals, May and Baker, and Fidson HealthCare Plc, this year, after final facility inspection.

The listed firms have met most of WHO’s conditions for pre-qualification.

Nigerian pharmaceutical firms are  currently not in a position to participate in international tenders for medicines against the three pandemics that require WHO pre-qualification. Experts say this development has been a major constraint on the local supply of medicines, especially anti-retroviral (ARVs), anti-malarial and anti-tuberculosis agents.

Until now, the WHO and the Global Fund are believed to spend over N20 billion annually on procuring drugs for Malaria, TB and AIDS intervention programmes in Nigeria. The drugs for these projects are procured especially from India and Brazil because no pharmaceutical firm in Nigeria is pre-qualified by WHO.

WHO prequalification ensures that drugs purchased by international agencies such as WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, for health interventions across the globe, meet international standards of quality, safety and efficacy.

With the backing of the  National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC),  WHO had last year endorsed these pharmaceutical firms for pre-qualification within two years.

In a recent interview with BusinessDay, Paul Orhii, Director-General, NAFDAC, explained “We are on course in our efforts to get Nigerian companies pre-qualified by the WHO. Officials of the WHO have been visiting the companies to ensure they are complying with the directives towards prequalification. With the reports we are getting, the companies are set and the WHO officials are happy with the level of compliance.”

BusinessDay investigations reveal that the WHO inspection team is to visit Nigeria in April 2013 probably for the final inspection of the five pharmaceutical firms and the likelihood of final declaration on the prequalification status of the firms before December 2013.

Ola Ijimakin, General Manager, Marketing, Fidson Healthcare Plc, revealed that the company (Fidson Healthcare Plc) has corrected certain technical requirements as requested by WHO, as well as built and upgraded its facilities at Sango Ota, Ogun State, in readiness for pre-qualification.

“We are among the five companies selected by the WHO team for prequalification. We are putting up a completely new facility at Sango Ota that will come on stream this year. The facility is designed and built to conform to the latest WHO-Good Manufacturing Practice (WHO-GMP) standards,” Ijimakin  said.

He explained that when a pharmaceutical firm intends to export to countries in Europe, it needs to export products that meet WHO prequalification standards.

“The first thing we want to do is get our GMP standard, so that we can say that our products compare with the rest in the world, so that we should be able to export them to other parts of Africa, Asia and even Europe. WHO prequalification process is a long one which could take a year to two to get,” Ijimakin said.

Stakeholders in the pharmaceutical sector believe that the quest by Nigerian pharmaceutical firms to attain WHO pre-qualification status would ensure that locally manufactured pharmaceutical products in Nigeria gain international acceptance. The nation can then request that drugs donated to Nigeria are purchased locally.

This feat, they believe, would help reduce the challenges confronting the pharmaceutical sector, such as low capacity utilisation, high production cost, drug counterfeiting, and continued dependency on the importation of drugs and pharmaceutical inputs for drug production.

The inability to compete in the global market is hinged on the fact that as of today, the nation’s pharmaceutical industry cannot withstand the huge drug imports from China and India, which have better cost advantages.

Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers supply 70 percent of drugs consumed in their local environment, and for export. Between 2009 and 2010, the industry, made up of many large and small firms, exported $9.1 billion worth of drugs and made a turnover of $21.7 billion.

Indian firms manufacture at far lower costs than their counterparts in developed countries. This is one half of its success, as India spends $23 billion on Research and Development (R&D), has 160,348 researchers, 40,711 research articles, and 1,234 patents.

With the pharmaceutical industry seen as one of the most valuable economic segments of the global economy, it is considered to have installed capacity that only caters for about 50 to 75 percent of the nation’s drug needs.