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By Madu Obi
The Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (NNMDA) has lamented the country's over-dependence on imported drugs and other healthcare products, noting that over 160 million Nigerians can no longer afford them.
The Director General of the Agency, Professor Martins Emeje, who spoke at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka during an engagement meeting on importance of integrating indigenous medicine with orthodox health practices, said the good thing is that over 40 percent of drugs in the pharmaceutical space globally originated from plants, which abound in Nigeria.
He said: "Nigeria and Africa have been over-dependent on importation of healthcare products, including drugs. As at today, Nigeria doesn't manufacture a single drug. This is quite painful and shameful."
"This simply means that we are insecure in terms of medicine, not just the insecurity we all know. That is why we decided to see how we can develop our own indigenous and natural medicine so that we can produce our drugs locally."
"Over 40% of current drugs in the pharmaceutical space globally are from the plant origin, not to talk of animals, minerals and soil. For every disease, the solution is within the environment."
"There's no disease in Nigeria that the panacea is not here. We can boast of men and women in our cultural heritage of herbal and traditional medical practitioners with wealth of knowledge and experience of how to tackle all manner of diseases in our society. That is why our ancestors lived over 100years."
"But today, life expectancy is less than 60years. That is because we have thrown away our culture and heritage and are busy exporting and exploiting our own cultural bio-diversity and depending on imported pharmaceuticals."
"This engagement is part of a research project involving five countries namely, China, India, United Kingdom, Uganda and Nigeria who are collaborating to find solutions to the problem of anti-microbial using herbal medicine of Nigeria origin."
"My agency is leading Nnamdi Azikiwe University and Obafemi Awolowo University, with Prof. Charles Esimone of UNIZIK and Prof Ibrahim Bellow as part of Nigeria's team to develop this medicine".
Emeje further said that plans had been concluded by the agency to establish research farms in all the 774 local government areas in Nigeria, as well as herbal clinics in all the states of the federation.
"The research farms are for integrated cultivation, medical production, functional foods, among others. Currently, that of Kano State is 90% completed, while that of Plateau and Cross River states have just commenced," he said.
The DG stated that NNMDA has been organizing training through its College of Natural Medicine where students receive lectures in different languages.
"We've been embarking on massive public enlightenment and training to tackle the issue of inferiority complex. We must believe in ourselves and what we can offer so that others will take us serious and buy into our products," he added.
The DG further allayed fears of intellectual property, saying, "the act establishing our agency clearly stated that intellectual property of all inventors and innovators is properly protected."
The Vice Chancellor of UNIZIK, Prof Charles Esimone said the engagement was targeted at harvesting indigenous knowledge of medical plants for affordable, sustainable and acceptable healthcare.
"We're trying to harvest indigenous knowledge in terms of medicinal plants, document and explore them further for affordable, sustainable and acceptable healthcare within and outside our environment."
"Nigeria is a big country to overlook or underrate, especially in the area of healthcare provision and we have comparative advantage in terms of natural medicine."
"We also have very rich, but untapped bio-diversity. Regrettably, our traditional healers with enormous endowment are going to their graves with those endowment."
"Universities are supposed to provide policy direction based on empirical researches they've done. UNIZIK has track record in terms of research in pharmaceuticals with corresponding strong pharmaceutical faculty and extensive collaboration nationally and internationally," Esimone said.
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