By Oyeniran Apata and Antonia Soyingbe
Nigerians must look inward, explore and exploit local solutions and alternative medications to health matters rather than be carried away by the mentality to sign contracts for foreign drugs.
This was the submission of the Emeritus Professor and Consultant Professor of Natural Products Chemistry and Herbal Medicine at the Nigerian National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), Professor Joseph Okogun, in a paper titled “Drug production efforts in Nigeria: Anti-cancer recipes emerge through herbs, chemistry and biology.”
L-R: Chief Medical Director, LASUTH, Prof. Adewale Oke; President, Union of National African Pediatric Societies and Associations (UNAPSA), Dr Dorothy Esangbedo; and Head of Medical and Regulatory, Sanofi Nigeria/Ghana, Dr. Inoussa Fiffen at the official launch of a new Insulin product by Sanofi Aventis in Lagos
Okogun was speaking at a public lecture organised by the Nigerian Academy of Science which held at the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Lagos, where he lamented the damage that the love for returns on contract for importation of foreign drugs had done to the development and production of herbal recipes in the country.
Stressing the need for local medicine to fulfill the basic criteria of safety and efficacy, he said that Gedunin, a local remedy for ovarian and colon cancer, which is being tested in the laboratory, is coined from the ‘Yoruba’ and Edo name for mahogany timber (Entandropharma angolense), adding that it has turned out to be a fulfilment of the mission of natural products research.
He said: “For various reasons, contemporary Nigeria is not in a position to develop drugs from active principles. Nigeria has to import most of her healthcare delivery drugs at great costs, but can develop herbal drugs from her rich bio-flora and ethno-medicines.”
Outlining the basic requirements for rational formulation of herbal remedies, Okogun commended the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), but warned the agency against raising standards to the detriment of local practitioners.
He said: “What NAFDAC is doing is good provided they do not raise the standard. They should look for basic parameters but not ask the traditional medicine people to use stainless steel. There could be other containers they can use apart from stainless steel.
“At least, we cook in aluminium pots and eat every day. They can ask them to use things like that and not strictly stainless steel or automation when there is high rate of unemployment in the country. Like they do in Britain and other places, tell them that there should be no contact, they should cover their head, the nose, the hands. If you talk of automation you can imagine the number of people that will lose their jobs.”
Advising Nigerians to look inward and accept trado-medicine, he said that that acceptance should be done in principle.
“Nigerians should accept traditional medicine in principle. In usage, they should use with confidence those that have some basic criteria of safety and efficacy. If there is evidence and there should be, because many of the traditional medicines have sorts of clinical trials that have been done, we need some basic quality.
“If you use water with cholera to make concoctions, the cholera in the water may take over from what the medicine is meant to cure. We should use traditional medicines that have analysis and evidence of safety efficacy,” he said.
Okogun advised traditional medicine practitioners to collaborate with recognised scientists and not people who will conduct a test and lie about it, saying that though this might be expensive, the chemical analysis, microbial load and toxicity tests are essential.
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