Help, drugs’ prices are on the rise

It is quite possible that our president and the ministers might not know since some of them don’t use hospitals in the country and so do not buy drugs here, but drugs’ prices are on the rise. It is not just the regular price increases we are witnessing under the Buhari government, but a steep increase in price as a result of the policies enunciated in the 2017 budget.  The federal government has raised import duties not only on items like SUVs, yachts, boats, fabrics, wheat flour among others but also on drugs particularly anti-malarial and antibiotics. You wonder how the government could lump drugs in the same group as luxury goods.

Surprisingly, it is not just the two classes of drugs that are affected; a visit to your local pharmacy will reveal that other drugs’ prices are on the rise as well. A pack of vitamin C tablets, which I bought for N150 last month, was sold at N250 early this month just as Coartem, a malaria drug by Novartis, prequalified by the World Health Organisation selling at less than a thousand naira for a pack of six tablets now go for as high as N1, 900. Yet malaria remains endemic in our country. Let’s not talk about drugs for other diseases like hypertension which a third of Nigerians are said to be suffering from with many undiagnosed yet, and others like diabetes, psychiatric ailments and others which coincidentally many are coming down with as a result of our lifestyle and government policies. Only those who are suffering from these or who buy drugs for their relatives and friends understand this better and that’s why it’s gone under the radar as we continue to talk about our president’s health. Other Nigerians’ health is in jeopardy as well consequent upon some of the policies of this government.

Even as the national assembly continues to shine the light on the 2017 budget, examples of the many oddities contain therein is the State House budget for cars and buses separately and the federal ministry of education budgeting N318 million for maintenance of generators this year, our senators and representatives need to probe further into the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) Common Economic Tariff (CET), which the finance minister gave as the basis for this increase. In separate interviews with pharmacists – industrial and academic, doctors, drug distributors, and marketers last week, they were unanimous in their verdict: this tariff increase will kill the drug industry as it is presently constituted in Nigeria. The pharmacists also agreed that lack of cohesion on their side killed any idea of consensus that could have helped in swaying the federal government on the matter. They further agreed that tariff or no tariff, Nigeria could not meet more than approximately 30% of its drugs need locally even if we forbid importation of any drug.

Beyond that, however, the pharmaceutical group of the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN), which contains the local drug manufacturers that supposedly are to be the beneficiaries of this tariff increase, would not be able to take advantage of it at all. The reasons are not far fetched; a major one is the power issue, which has succeeded in ensuring that local manufacturers’ capacity is under utilized and other policies of the government, which lack synergy. My investigation also revealed that lumping anti-malarial drugs and antibiotics on the list is a response to a lobby by two local drug manufacturers who have the ears of the government after a zero duty policy across all products created confusion in the industry. We must also look into the aspect of raw materials for drug production of which there is a five per cent duty as this contributes to high prices of drugs as well.

While there is no doubt about the need to grow our local capacity, the government will do well to remember that drugs are not luxury items but essentials and nobody take them for the fun of it. Apart from preventive ones, you take drug because of a problem or the other and until we put our house in order, we cannot by fiat turn Nigeria to a drug sufficient country. There is also the issue of brand name drugs versus generic drugs which I’m not sure is even engaging the attention of our government. Nearly all the drugs for serious illnesses are brand drugs which have patent that may last as long as 20 years and so we can do nothing but to continue importing those ones. India, however, offers an example of how countries can get round that for the well being of their citizens. When you factor in that pharmaceutical companies do not get any concession in sourcing foreign exchange, we can understand why Nigerians will have to pay more for drugs.

One of the chief executives of the drug companies I spoke with gave another angle to this tariff increase. As at June 2016, his company had 42 medical representatives selling drugs for it, the number had gone down to 33 by December. Next month, he added, it must go down to 22, as it can no longer sustain what it has presently. Just imagine what will happen across the industry if the situation persists.