IGBOZURUOKE FORUM

The first step for actualization of the Aba Drug Mart and Coordinated Wholesale Centre (CWC), was taken on January 26, 2018, when the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Folorunso Adewole, performed its ground-breaking ceremony at Osisioma, near Aba, the commercial capital of Abia State. The Aba CWC being one of the four the Federal Government was planning to establish across the country would serve parts of the South-East and the South-South zones. Others are in Kano, Lagos and Onitsha.

The essence of the establishment of the drug marts across the country was to ensure that dealers on wholesale drugs are put in a defined area that would make it possible for proper monitoring to eliminate fake and substandard drugs. It would also ensure that while the government encourages people who want to do business on drugs realize value for their money, at the same time; it would make it easier for the government to collect taxes.

Adewole said government would as from January 1, 2019, put a ban on open sales of drugs in markets across the country. As from that date going by the minister’s assertion, anybody found contravening the directive would be arrested and the pharmaceutical products would not spared as they would be confisticated.

He said there would be no going back on the deadline to stop wholesale and distribution of drugs at the open markets across the country: “As at last year we agreed at a stakeholders meeting in Lagos that we’ll build a CWC here and there’s no going back. If we find anybody doing distribution, wholesale marketing of drugs outside this designated centre with effect from January 1, 2019, we’ll arrest that person and confisticate the products. This directive came from the committee of pharmaceutical sector reform and it has presidential backing.”

The minister disclosed that it was due to the notable role the South-East play in the sale and distribution of drugs in the country that made two of the CWCs to be sited in the zone; just as he made it clear that the Aba centre which is the second in the zone, when completed would ensure that Abians and other citizens of the country have access to quality and genuine drugs.

He said with the drug mart in place, it would ensure that the issue of drugs dealership would be more organized with the aim of bringing more profit to the dealers and equally remitting appropriate taxes to the governments. He saw the event as historic, saying that it represents a great step forward towards ensuring that the health of the people was well taken care of:

“The whole concept stems from our desire to ensure that we control drug distribution in Nigeria. This will ensure that the drugs that are being distributed are of good quality.”

Before coming for the event in Aba, the minister had earlier in Umuahia, the state capital, commissioned a drug resistant TB laboratory where he said the essence of the laboratory was to find a way to diagnose the resistant and non-resistant TB in patients and also treat them. He said the TB treatment centre and the laboratory, which is one of the five in the country would serve the South Eastern zone.

He took time off to visit the kidney transplant facility at the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, where he commended the Chief Medical Director (CMD), Dr. Abali Chukw, whom he called the “Magician” for his achievements, stating that the centre would become the hub for kidney care in the South East.

To him, with the drug mart in place, health facilities in the South-East and other parts of the country were 100 per cent sure of getting genuine and unadulterated drugs all year round.

Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, represented by his deputy, Sir Ude Oko Chukwu, expressed government’s delight that the project and the Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Laboratory and Treatment Center at Amachara General Hospital in Umuahia South Local Government, were situated in the state.

Chukwu assured that despite the N100 million the governor promised to give for the TB centre that the state was willing to give out its land to similar developmental project initiatives to be sited in the state by the Federal Government. He also promised that the state government would ensure that the drug dealers would have adequate security and infrastructural facilities that would enable them do business with ease.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ceremony, Chief Mascot Uzor Kalu, who was on the minister’s entourage said he came to witness the ceremony in support of what the Federal Government was doing in the health sector as it concerns the area that was so dear to him, Aba zone, saying that it was a project the state deserves to have.

To him, with the project and others, the Federal Government was handling particularly in the area of roads reconstruction in the state, it would be wrong for anybody to say that the APC-led Federal Government has not done anything for the state:

“The government has done for the state what the 16 years of PDP did not do for us. One of the problems of the South-East has been road construction. If you look around, you see that the APC government has been working on a lot of roads in the past two years that were not achieved in the 16 years of PDP administration.”

Daily Sun