Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, has advised African governments to develop fiscal and other business-supporting policy frameworks to increase Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA’s) manufacturing capacity of essential pharmaceuticals to improve the regional health system.
The minister was quoted in a statement issued on Wednesday by the Deputy Director/Head (Media & Public Relations Unit) of the Ministry of Health, Ahmadu Chindaya, as making the call in a virtual presentation during the WHO AFRO 72 Regional Committee for Africa now holding in Lome, Togo.
According to him, efforts to improve Nigeria’s healthcare system and those of other countries in the continent have not achieved much due to high dependency on imported goods and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on overseas manufacturers, thereby making African countries to spend huge sums on imported health-enhancing drugs.
While lamenting the ugly situation, which has pushed Africa to the bottom of the priority ranking for commodities and vaccines globally, Ehanire stressed that “Africa must increase regional manufacturing capacity of essential health items.”
Noting that Nigeria remains among the countries that are just recovering from the negative social and economic impacts of theCOVID-19 pandemic, the minister said that the country was working hard to strengthen public health to improve routine health care towards achieving Universal Health Coverage.
Ehanire said: “Nigeria has improved and expanded its public laboratory networks, intensive care units, isolation centres and increased oxygen production capacity to build back better.
“Government under the health sector reform is increasingly improving its services and capacity especially under the Primary Health Care (PHC), crowning it with signing of the new National Health Insurance Authority, which makes health care insurance mandatory”, the minister added.
