By Joseph Treasure
The federal government and relevant stakeholders have been called upon to remove the bottlenecks associated with the delay in clinical trial of drugs in Nigeria.
The Founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola made the call at a conference on Drug Discovery in Africa holding in the institution.
Aare Babalola said there were many bottlenecks associated with the production of drugs in the country such as inefficiency of testing equipment, cumbersome system in approving drugs by concerned agencies and huge tax placed on importation of testing equipment.
He pointed out that ABUAD had produced some drugs from local herbs especially a covid-19 drug known as “Virucidine” which it’s clinical trial had not been completed.
According to Aare Babalola, there is the need to remove all hindrances to easy testing and approval of scientific researches in the country.
“Currently we have data for the treatment /management of diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, breast cancer and autism from herbs in medicine garden”.
The Provost, College of Pharmacy of the institution, Professor Mbang Femi-Oyewo said the African continent was blessed with varieties of plants which are useful in the production of drugs, but they had not been properly harnessed.
Professor Femi-Oyewo noted that though the College of Pharmacy of ABUAD had been developing drugs using natural resources, the conference would help to record more breakthrough.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Acting Vice Chancellor of ABUAD, Professor Sylvester Ojo expressed optimism that at the end of the conference, many plants available in Africa would be tapped into to develop drugs.
While speaking, one of the key speakers at the Conference, Professor Birgit Strodel from Germany said the idea of gathering Experts to discuss ways of developing drugs in Africa using herbs.