Ruby Rabiu
20 March 2008
Abuja — The Federal Government has urged pharmacists in the country to focus their efforts on the production of drugs to treat and prevent malaria which has been fatal.
The Minister of State for Health, Architect Gabriel Aduku, made the call at the opening ceremony of the international workshop on green chemistry and essential drug production in developing countries.
Urging the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), he said it had become necessary to look inwards for solutions to conquer malaria as the drugs meant to cure the disease, Arteminisinin based Combination Therapies (ACTs), has become scarce and inaccessible to the masses.
The minister, while revealing the institute's malaria new drug said, "NIPRD has produced a new phytomedicine from local natural products for the treatment of malaria which is now at phase 111 clinical trial."
He called on the experts in the country to look into the production of the drug as a cheaper alternative.
He recalled that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had in 2001 suggested that malaria in developing countries was resistant to older drugs like chloroquine, urging a change to ACTs.
Aduku, however, observed that since that recommendation there has being a rapid increase in the prices of the drugs.
He called on experts from Howard University and other countries to assist NIPRD look for an alternative by improving on the ACTs for the purpose of "cultivation, extraction of active ingredients and processing to finished drugs."
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