Patent Medicine Dealers Deserve More Recognition – NAPPMED President

Prince Joel Odo is the national president of Nigerian Association of Patent and Proprietary Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED). In this interview, he discusses key roles patent medicine dealers play in the nation’s health sector, and makes a case for their full recognition by the government for enhanced health delivery in the country,

Excerpts:

How are NAPPMED members spread in Nigeria?

We are in all nooks and crannies of Nigeria, including creeks. We have over 675, 000 registered members nationwide.

How do you coordinate your operations?

We have structures everywhere. We have chapels, units, zones and state chapters. In fact, once we take decisions at the national level, such decisions are taken down to the zonal. The zones are under the units, and the units are under the state. We have local government chairmen, unit chairmen, and state presidents. The presidents attend the national meetings while the units attend the state meetings.

How does your association encourage members to obtain their permanent voters’ cards?

We are all Nigerians and adults. Going into this business, one must be of age to handle drugs. We have our PVCs. Our association is composed of all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. But we won’t direct members where to vote because individuals have their rights to vote anybody of their choice. The truth is that with what is happening in the country today, everybody wants a paradigm shift.
We want Nigeria to be re-arranged because aged men have taken the positions youths supposed to occupy. They came into power when they were below 30. What are they still doing there at 70 and above? They should give the youths opportunities to also do their own. At my age, I don’t have much time again because the old men did not give us opportunities into governance. In the next 10 years, I would have become an old man. This means I did not play my own quota to the country. If the old did not hijack the system, I would have seen the opportunity to become either a minister, governor or at least a lawmaker to make this country better. But there is no more space for the youths, and the old have nothing to offer. Our prayer is that the old men should allow the youths to come in to put the country in order.

How does your association check fake drugs in the system?

Thank God for the good work of NAFDAC that numbers drugs. Our members know how to identify fake and counterfeit drugs. Anybody selling them simply wants to do that. There are numbers inscribed on them for easy identification. Our members know that getting these drugs from open markets may make them vulnerable to fake drugs. I urge them to be very careful by simply observing those precautions and being alert. Some of us who buy drugs from manufacturers directly also check these facts meticulously.

How do you discipline erring members?

We have stringent measures. If it is the government that arrested such an erring member, we won’t go there. If it is our task force that arrested the person, because we have task forces at unit, state and national levels, after dealing with the person, the victim will be handed over to NAFDAC for further actions.

What are your challenges as the leader of this association?

The problem we have in this country is to assume that you can do it alone as a leader. Governance is collaborative. We do set up committees. The executives will be working. Reports will be discussed and holistic decisions taken. Leadership is not the problem, it depends on the way one carries it. There won’t be any problem if one listens to the views of members.

What is the relationship between your association and the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria like?

We relate well, but the problem we always have with them is because they see us as quacks. We don’t challenge them in anyway. But one practical problem in Nigeria is to underrate anybody. I have seen where a car belonging to a professor of mechanical engineering packed up, and he resorted to roadside mechanics. What matters are those in the field.

When you bring a pharmacist to treat wounds, the person wouldn’t be able to do that. I will do that more than a pharmacist. We as patent medicine dealers believe in referrals. I don’t treat what I can’t handle. Without patent medicine dealers, nobody can identify sicknesses in local areas. The pharmacists are not there, but they don’t believe that we are doing anything because they see us as people taking their jobs.
We believe in obtaining licences, but such should come through a normal channel. They are not the people giving us licences before. It was directly from the ministry of health. Former health minister ABC Nwosu delegated them to assist the ministry. But they wanted to hijack every other thing. I believe in licensing because if you buy a vehicle today, aside having vehicle particulars, one would also belong to a union before picking passengers along the road, in the case of commercial vehicles. The pharmacists should allow us to operate. They know our problems. They should commend us for the good jobs we are doing in this country. In my village of about 15, 000 persons, there are no pharmacy shops. Also we don’t have a standard hospital. It is the patent medicine dealers that serve us. The government needs to commend them for their good jobs. The government should stop colluding with the pharmacists in troubling patent medicine dealers.
We thank God that the government has started realising that we are doing a very good job. We also thank the Society for Family Health and the World Health Organisation for their partnership with us. They take drugs to the downstream. You know about roll malaria programmes. They believe that we are the people that have the structures, and that we are everywhere. Even the tuberculosis treatment, we are doing it. Pharmacists can’t do it.

What do you want the government to do for patent medicine dealers in this country?

We had a roundtable with the honourable minister last August. I asked him: why does the ministry engage ad-hoc staff for its immunisation programmes? Some of the ad-hoc staff do not know anything about drugs. They train them within weeks and ask them to serve the public. We have been in this field for many years. Our association is over 60 years. Some of us have trained medical personnel from this business. Some know everything about drugs. Why can’t the health ministry use our structures to immunise our people effectively so that they can gain more from the government and also see that as encouragement to us to do more?
The government should give us access to loans. We thank First Bank that has come to our aid. They provided that we use our certificates to obtain loans as collateral. If not, nobody has come to assist us. We have no money to stock our shops to meet what the villagers require. The villagers at times do not have funds, and we still give them drugs to get well. We serve them. We appeal to the government to make funds available as loans and grants to our members. It is only in patent medicine shops that you see people with less than N50, 000, and they are doing jobs worth over N2m in society.

Do your members sell herbal products?

If it is herbal and they have NAFDAC numbers, it means they are genuine. We sell genuine drugs. Our own is to give one what he or she wants. If they say ‘don’t sell’, we don’t. One cannot just come and say ‘give me drugs’ and I will give. There are some drugs that are not sold without prescriptions. We look into the person that recommended such. There are some drugs that we don’t sell. We follow our own ethics. There are drugs that we call ‘over the counter’. Any drug that belongs to that group, we sell it.

What is your message to Nigeria’s health stakeholders?

NAPPMED is doing a lot of jobs in this country. If we have not been doing a good job, and they say ‘let every patent member’, as the quack they always call us, ‘kill one person in a day’, today Nigeria will not exist. If over 627, 000 patent medicine dealers continue killing one person every month, today Nigeria would have been a write-off. Nigerians should be encouraging patent medicine dealers.