ITREALMS:
The former
Director-General, Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) and Principal Partner
of NQI Consult Limited, Dr. Joseph Ikemefuna Odumodu, has enjoined pharmacists
in the country to keep abreast with technological development in order to be
relevant in the highly competitive world, which is currently dominated by the
Western and Asian countries, reports ITREALMS.
Odumodu, who spoke
recently in Benin, Edo State, where he was a Keynote Speaker at 2019 Pharmacy
Week, said because of a fast changing world driven by technology, it is
imperative to have continuing robust conversations about its disruptions and
shocks in the ways “we do things in our industry.”
“Increasingly and
across the globe, both academics and practitioners are questioning the
continued relevance of our profession in the face of future technologies such
as artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, e-commerce, internet
of things etc. Indeed, and to be fair to us their impacts cut across all
sectors and industries.
We are operating in a
very challenging economic environment characterized by rapidly rising
population and growing unemployment rate. It is estimated that in another 30
years, the population of Nigeria will spiral to about 400 million.
So we have to begin to
plan how to manage the health challenges of 400 million people from the current
206 million in a situation where disposable income remains low,” said Odumodu,
who is a pharmacist.
According to him,
while there have been some good news in the health sector such as improvement
in immunization coverage, drop in wild polio virus cases, health insurance for
coverage for the formal sector, availability of midwives to primary health
centers, access to free health for pregnant women and children under 5 years,
drop in HIV prevalence rate and reduction of fake medicines, a lot still needs
to be done when viewed against some other discomforting and sobering
statistics.
He said that “local
pharmaceutical companies have been consistently losing share of our local
market accounting for only 20% of our domestic consumption, adding that
“this contribution of about 20% of our national needs is
principally from ‘assembly of imported chemicals’ in imported packaging made
from imported paper and inks; the only local content in essentially labour.”
About 292,000 new-borns die every year, 2nd highest in the world.
Odumodu regretted that
Nigeria’s pharmaceutical industry is seriously under the weight of drug Armada
from India and China just as there is an increasing trend and pressure to
outsource production to China and India, sacrificing professional and security
expediency to commercial profits.
He said that
even the 120 or so pharmaceutical companies operating in Nigeria, in the bid to
survive have joined the trading chain as marketers of foreign firms, regretting
that the local pharmaceutical industry is not in any way partaking in the
almost 1 trillion US dollar global market.
On the drug
manufacturing scale, the former Managing Director and CEO of May & Baker
Plc said “we neither have the competitive nor comparative advantage against
such countries as India, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa
and Israel,” adding that “the import of the foregoing is that it will remain a
challenge for us to guarantee the efficacy of the medicines we administer to
our patients.”
On how to overcome
this disadvantage, Odumodu advised that pharmacists must build
collaborations, if not mergers, citing the banking consolidation policy
which led to six Nigerian banks emerging in the first 1000 in global
ranking. Nigerian banks are now winning internationally and spreading over the
UK, US and the African continent.
“We must come together
and pool resources to achieve better economies of scale in manufacturing. In
addition, we must start by investing in simple excipients like pharma grade
starch. We can never achieve any level of competitiveness by importing all
inputs,” he counseled.
According to Odumodu,
the context now is the digital revolution. “Patients are more and less
dependent on their doctors for advice and are increasingly able and willing to
take greater control over their own health. They feel empowered by the vast
amount of health information available online and on apps and by array of
health and fitness wearables such as Fitbits and apple watch. Truth is that
technology can improve patient safety, enable pharmacists to provide quality
care and help patients make most of their medicines.”
Electronic prescribing
of controlled substances and prescription drug monitoring programme are
technologies presently being used in pharmacy and their use are bound to
escalate in the years ahead just as robots are taking over menial and
repetitive tasks such as counting pills and freeing up pharmacists to do higher
order jobs.
Technology has also
been found useful for patient profile monitoring, medication, database
management and material management.
It is increasingly
being useful for drug interactions, drug information services and patients
counselling. Online pharmacy is threatening the existence of our traditional
pharmacy as most prescription drugs increasingly available to consumers.
Community pharmacies
are using digital technologies such as social media, interactive websites,
mobile apps, electronic records etc to empower the patients and achieve better
results.
Another innovative
solution is the idea of digital interactive pharmacy kiosks that allows
patients to converse in real-time through a live stream video feed with a
pharmacy technician or pharmacist.
“The question and a
disturbing one for that matter is whether our profession will soon be extinct
and replaced by robots and Amazon (e-commerce). A large part of our work is
pharmacotherapeutic management. This on the surface seems cut and dry but it is
actually an artform, requiring many years of experience with medication and
incorporating current research on and prices of medication,” said
Odumodu.
Uj. N. Dominic/Editor
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