Stakeholders in the health sector have called on the new President, Bola Tinubu to tackle the challenges in the sector.
The national president of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, ACPN, Adewale Oladigbolu urged Tinubu to prioritise increasing local pharmaceutical drug manufactured in the country.
Oladigbolu said such incentives would help scale up the percentage of drugs produced in the country, which currently stands below 30 per cent.
“The government needs to prioritise incentives for drug manufacturers locally because drugs manufactured locally will generate lots of revenue, provide jobs and develop the sector,” Oladigbolu explained.
According to him, the incentives could be in the form of low-interest loans, setting up industrial parks in the six geo-political zones and a stable power supply.
“This will increase the percentage of locally made drugs from below 30 per cent to 75 per cent target,” he said.
Meanwhile, chairman of the Nigerian Heart Foundation’s hypertension committee, Basden Onuwubere urged the new government to be more sensitive to the health and well-being of Nigerians.
Mr Onuwubere said the health insurance policy in the country should be effective to ensure more access to good and quality healthcare.
“Over the years, Nigerian governments in the past have been insensitive to health and education, a country where the allocation for health is less than five per cent of the budget is very bad,” Mr Onuwubere stated. “We hope the new government will be more sensitive and do more on health insurance.”
He added that the previous governments “tried in the area of health insurance, but this government should make it more effective.”
Alleluia is the Assistant Editor and Content Writer at LagosPost.ng. She is a prolific writer and editor, she has written features and news stories on Lifestyle, Sports, Business, Politics and B2B marketing. She is also an event coordinator, host and social media content creator.
