3 Nigerian companies get WHO approval to produce drugs for malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis

Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, has announced 3 Nigerian pharmaceutical companies have met the World Health Organisation’s Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Pre-qualification for the production of drugs against malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases.

The pharmaceutical companies are Evans Pharmaceutical Ltd, May & Baker Pharmaceutical Ltd and Chi Pharmaceutical Ltd.
Chukwu said the firms got WHO’s approval after demonstrating acceptable levels of compliance with the WHO GMP after Audits/Inspections by WHO pre-qualification team. He said Nigeria and West Africa had four pharmaceutical companies, including Swiss Pharm Nigeria Limited that joined other five pharmaceutical manufacturers in Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa) that were initially certified to produce medicines for malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other United Nations coordinated projects, including the UN Commission on Life Saving Commodities.
He revealed that pre-qualification is one of the major challenges of the Nigerian local drug industries and has been of great concern to the Nigerian government because money and recourse were being lost by government for non-WHO pre-qualification of local drug manufacturing companies.
The minister revealed that out of the 11 companies that started the journey, four have succeeded. He expressed optimism that the remaining seven will be pre-qualified soon.

This is great news, we are stepping up