The Senate Committee on Health has summoned the Minister of Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo; Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire; and the Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, over the manufacturing, importation, and policy guideline for syringes in Nigeria.

The chairman of the committee, Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe (APC, Kwara Central) issued the summon on Monday at a public hearing on “the need to regulate the manufacturing, importation and use of syringes and needles to protect the lives and safety of Nigerians as well as the economy of the country”.

Members of the panel expressed displeasure over failure of Ministry of Trade and Investment to activate the Backward Integration Policy (BIP) on local production of syringes five years after it was validated

The Senate committee also slammed NAFDAC for licensing companies in India and China to import syringes into Nigeria.

“You can’t keep licensing agents outside Nigeria to import syringes, while local firms are dying. There is no complexity in the production of syringes,” Oloriegbe said.

He said despite the capacity of the local firms to meet the market demands, an estimated over 1 Billion units per annum of syringe and needles are being imported into the country making the country to lose huge foreign exchange.

The committee therefore asked Trade and Investment Minister to appear before it on April 15 to explain reasons why the BIP, which was validated in 2017, has not been presented to Federal Executive Council (FEC) for approval.

It mandated NAFDAC to furnish with with the list of companies that have been importing syringes into the country in the last 15 years, the quantity imported, evidence of checks on licensed foreign companies and licensing fees.

The committee also directed Dr. Ehanire to explain why public-owned hospitals were not using locally-manufactured syringes.

Meanwhile, the president of the Medical Device Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MEDMAN), Akin Oyediran, said all the seven licensed local manufacturers have the potential to produce 2.4 billion units of syringes per annum if provided with favorable business environment.

“The syringes needed in Nigeria is between 2 billion to 2.5 billion annually. All the seven local manufacturers have the capacity to produce 1. 95 billion a year. But if we have the support of the government, especially the implementation of Backward Integration Policy, they will scale up and would be able to produce all the demands in a matter of months. The quality is world class. The quality is not questionable,” he said.

On the losses suffered as a result of importation of syringes into Nigeria, he said the issue was not about money lost but the risk of exposing Nigerians to substandard syringes being imported into Nigeria.

TodayNG