By Tobias Lengnan Dapam
The Director General of National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), Dr. Obi Adigwe, has said that the institute under his leadership places more priority on science, technology, innovation as well as local and international partnerships.
He stated this while receiving an award at the 24th Annual National Conference of the Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria (NAIP), yesterday.
Dr. Adigwe and the NIPRD’s Head of Research and Development, Prof. Martins Emeje, were recognized with awards for leading a new NIPRD which leverages on modern technologies to produce new products.
The NIPRD Director General noted that while tropical diseases such as malaria remain a significant healthcare challenge, non-communicable and emerging diseases such as Ebola and COVID-19 were steadily rising in Nigeria and many African countries.
He, however, disclosed that NIPRD has already developed and listed 3 COVID-19 products, while at least 10 other products were awaiting industry take up.
He reassured that NIPRD under his watch remained committed to achieving health equity in Nigeria through Research and Development (R&D) for local drug production and medicine security.
This, according to him, informed the huge investment already deployed at NIPRD to having Africa’s most robust Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning project in Drug Discovery & Phytomedicinal Development.
This intervention, he said, will exponentially improve relevant outcomes, while conserving scarce resources in our R&D setting.
According to Adigwe, the recent infrastructure investment in Bioavailability and Bioequivalence was aimed at achieving high quality Nigerian products with the hope of dominating the continent once the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) picked up speed.
He called on experts in the pharmaceutical industry to partner with NIPRD’s Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) and Excipients’ Value Chain Production Project.
The API project, he explained, is considered by many to be Africa’s most ambitious project geared towards ensuring Medicines’ Security and changing the contribution of the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry to the nation’s GDP from the current abysmally low value of less than 0.25% to at least, 30% in the next decade.
