‘Unaffordable costs of essential medications violate right to life’

By Abubakar Yunusa

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has raised the alarm that many Nigerians are dying silently because of their precarious economic situations that has made it impossible for them to buy essential medications.

HURIWA said the right to affordable and quality healthcare is a fundamental human right and any nation that is unable to meet this threshold is a failed state.

The rights group said it is cruel, dehumanising, wicked and absolutely unacceptable that government officials, who are chauffeur-driven in exotic vehicles and fueled from public funds, are looking the other way while millions of Nigerians suffer from not being able to buy prescribed medicines.

It said: “We are of the position that at no other time in the history of Nigeria as a sovereignty, has it become practically impossible for millions of indigent citizens living with one health condition or the other that can medically be managed by adherence to a regime of medication at the expert recommendation of medical doctors, who can no longer afford these life-saving medicines and most people with such situations are now in-between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

HURIWA blamed the poor framing and implementation of critical economic policies such as the sudden withdrawal of subsidy on petrol and the floating of the value of naira vis-a-vis that of other foreign monetary notes for the shoot up in the prices of essential medication.

The group appealed to President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of a national emergency on medication and the high costs of pharmaceutical products and then implement measures to lift certain restrictions and tariffs on imported life-saving pharmaceutical products into Nigeria.