The Chairman of the Lagos branch of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Pharmacist Bolanle Adeniran, has called on the Federal Government to put an end to the hawking of drugs in the streets. Adeniran stated this during the opening ceremony of the 2019 Scientific Week of the society held in Lagos recently.“Patent medicine vending, which is meant to be a stop-gap mechanism in service delivery to people in under-served areas has become a huge albatross on the necks of practising pharmacists because it facilitates easy access to all categories of drugs, which are never monitored because of the severe challenges facing the regulatory agencies, especially in terms of logistics.”
The Executive Director of NTEL, Pharm. Inusa Bello lamented the number of registered patent medicine stores available in the country. He called on the government to place a ban on them.
He said, “In Nigeria today, we have about one million registered patent medicine stores and less than 50,000 registered pharmacies. The people in charge of registration for patent medicine stores should stop registering them now. The existing ones should go into extinction. If the Lagos State Government can ban motorcycles from operating on its roads, then why do we think it is impossible to ban patent medicine dealers?”
Source: Punch