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Nigeria: 'Inferno Won't Affect 40,000 HIV/Aids Patients'
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This Day (Lagos)
30 April 2008
Posted to the web 30 April 2008
Godwin Haruna
Lagos
Country Representative of the Harvard PEPFAR programme, Prof. Robert Murphy, has disclosed that the weekend fire that gutted the central medical store of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Yaba, Lagos, would not affect anti-retroviral drug supplies to People Living With HIV in the country.
Prof. Murphy stated this in Lagos yesterday while reacting to the warehouse inferno, which destroyed consumables, drugs, reagents and other equipment. Speaking with journalists after inspecting the rubble that the edifice that was commissioned with fanfare a few years ago had become , Murphy described the incident as a catastrophe of an unimaginable magnitude.
He said PEPFAR has 29 other treatment sites in the country, adding that although they get supplies from the burnt warehouse, they have reserves, which could last them two months before the emergency orders being placed by partners arrive.
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In his reaction, Dr. Oni Idigbe said detectives have been invited to unearth the circumstances that led to the fire incident that razed the entire building. Idigbe added that when the residents of the sprawling NIMR complex were woken by the fire alarm in the early hours of Saturday morning, they battled in vain to stop it. Also speaking, Dr. Prosper Okonkwo, chief executive officer of the programme said: "We wish to reassure our 40,000 patients that we have enough supplies at all our sites to ensure that their drug supplies will not be interrupted at all. All our treatment sites maintain a buffer stock and we have begun ordering drugs to replace those that have been lost. Our funders, the government of Nigeria and our partners are helping to ensure continuous supply."
Okonkwo added that they were conducting an inventory of what has been lost and could not readily quantify the cost of the fire incident. He gave the assurance that they would do everything possible to minimize the effect, which the tragic incident would have on the patients.
The burnt warehouse served as a store to all the antiretroviral drugs and laboratory reagents that the Harvard PEPFAR programme uses in support of the Federal Government ART programme at 29 sites spread across nine states of the federation.
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