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The recent commissioning of the Kanawa Coordinated Warehouse Centre (CWC) otherwise known as the Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje Pharmaceutical Centre in Kano was a major step towards banning sale of drugs in the open market with its attendant counterfeiting.
This was said to have given an impetus to the clamour for a shutdown of stores of traders selling wholesale drugs in the open market especially at Sabon Gari.
A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that substandard drugs kill 500,000 persons in sub-Saharan Africa each year with 267,000 deaths per year linked to falsified and substandard anti-malarial medicines.
In Kano, especially the state government seized drugs worth N6bn in an exercise that has continued unabated in a bid to fight the scourge of fake drugs.
The multi-billion Naira Warehouse Centre developed under a Private-Public Partnership (PPP) arrangement between Brains and Hammers Limited and the Kano State Government is the Phase 1 of the larger 117-acre Kano Economic City (KEC).
Daily Trust reports that the Kano Centre is just the first out of the many Warehouse Centres the federal government plans to commission across the country.
Governor Ganduje said with the commissioning, “All other areas for wholesale of drugs in the state will be closed down forthwith and those found wanting will be taken for prosecution.”
He added, “This is a completely regulated market. It is the only legal place where you can sell wholesale drugs. The Federal Government has guidelines for the sale of drugs that are healthy and we promised ourselves in 2015 when we came in that we will change the vulnerable situation in the sale of counterfeit, illegal and fake drugs that Kano finds itself. With this commissioning today, we have reached a major milestone in the battle to control illegal and fake drugs.”
Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire and Director General, NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeleye praised Governor Ganduje for becoming a model for other states.
Ehanire said, “History will be kind to your administration for relocating all the stakeholders to a regulated drug facility. The plan was that we will not close down the open market shops without providing an alternative. That is how we came about the CWC. It has never existed in Nigeria.”
Chairman of the KEC, Alhaji Mohammed Aliyu Chiroma described the Coordinated Pharmaceutical Wholesale Centre as a complex of 2100 shops with warehouses that will house businesses of all pharmaceutical products in Kano under the control of regulatory bodies such as Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN), Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON), and NAFDAC.
With the formal opening in Kano, experts advocate the replication of the facility in other places like Ariaria in Abia State, Idumota in Lagos State and Onitsha Head Bridge in Anambra State.
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