‘5,000 Unlicensed Pharmacies Doing Business In Nigeria’

THE Managing Director of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical Company, Mr. Lekan Asuni, has disclosed the existence of about 8,000 registered and unregistered pharmacies in the country, regretting that 5,000 out of that number are unregistered.

Asuni lamented that in the last 20 years the pharmaceutical industry was contributing 10 percent to the nation’s capital market compared to recent years when he said the capitalization ratio of the industry declined to about only 1 percent.

He spoke as Guest Speaker at the 7th Annual Symposium and Business Summit of the National Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria (NAIP), held at Tahir Guest Palace Hotel, Kano.

Warning that “the present drug distribution system in the county is simply chaotic and deserving of serious and urgent attention to save the industry,” the GlaxoSmithKline boss noted that there are consequences attached to unstructured drug distribution system in the pharmaceutical industry.

Some of these consequences, he indicated, include rising cost of treatment due to failures, which could lead to deaths, divestment or closure of pharmaceutical companies, loss of revenue to both government and the industry, reputation damage, among others.

Earlier, the Kano State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Kabiru Ibrahim Getso, assured that the government would join hands to see that the distribution of fake and adulterated drugs were tamed vowing that the state government would do everything possible to see that drug abuse was fought to standstill in the state.