Favour Ozioma Ogbodo
Worried about the increase in antimalarial medicines, SBM Intelligence had called for provision of safe cheaper alternatives for treating malaria.
In August 2023, GlaxoSmithKline, a British Pharmaceutical company, announced the end of its 51-years old business in Nigeria. This was barely 3 months after Sanofi, also announced plans of their exit.
SBM Intelligence, in a report of a survey posted on its website on December 5, noted that Emzor’s Paracetamol accounted for the highest rate of cost and selling price increase, growing by over 450% and 250%, respectively, since 2019. It doubled its rate of increase from a 25% jump in the selling price in 2022 to 50% in 2023.
It added that the survey found that antibiotics recorded the highest inflation in medicine prices, attributing it to continued antibiotic demand.
”This led the manufacturers to use this as leverage to pass on increased production costs to the consumers. On a year-on-year basis, the cost price of Ampiclox recorded the highest rate of increase between 2022 and 2023, jumping by 346 percentage points, while the selling price of Amoxil recorded the fastest rate of increase in the same period, jumping by over 400 percentage points,” it stated.
Nigeria bears the highest burden of malaria in the world, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and antimalarials cannot afford to be out of the populace’s reach.
According to the survey, 19% of respondents reported spending a significant amount of their income on healthcare and 67% of respondents who reported making lifestyle changes due to a high cost of living, listed cutting back on healthcare bills.
This shows the severity of the situation and could lead disease outbreak due to untreated illnesses, SBM Intelligence stated.
