•The Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate

Global pharmaceutical company, Bayer, is to establish a reproductive health commodities manufacturing plant in Nigeria, with the facility currently under construction in Anambra State.

The plant is expected to manufacture family planning commodities locally, reducing Nigeria’s dependence on imported products, creating jobs and contributing to economic growth.

The Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, disclosed this in Abuja at the inauguration of the High-Level Inter-Ministerial Platform (IMP) on Family Planning, Health, Human Capital and Sustainable National Development.

Pate described the investment as evidence that President Bola Tinubu’s Executive Order on the pharmaceutical sector was beginning to attract significant investments in local pharmaceutical manufacturing, diagnostics and health technology.

Also speaking, the Managing Director of FP2030 West and Central Africa Office, Dr Alain Damiba, described the initiative as a major step towards strengthening cross-sector collaboration to improve health outcomes and accelerate Nigeria’s socio-economic development.

Damiba commended the Federal Government for adopting a whole-of-government approach, noting that the new platform demonstrated that health and family planning were national development priorities and not issues that should be left to the health sector alone.

“Health, including family planning, is a smart investment in human capital and Nigeria’s future,” Damiba said.

Source: The Guardian Nigeria

•Professor Jesse Uneke

The Vice Chancellor of David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences (DUFUS), Ebonyi State, Professor Jesse Uneke, has estimated that more than 600,000 Nigerians died yearly due to issues relating to the administration of medical oxygen.

Uneke, who is the Nigerian and State Lead/Principal Investigator for the EQUI-RESP Africa Research Project, disclosed this in Abakaliki, during the First Stakeholders’ Engagement Event/Co-Creation Workshop on Medical Oxygen Economy organised by the university in conjunction with the University of Edinburgh, UK, supported by the National Institute for Health and Research (NIHR), UK.

He explained that the administration of medical oxygen issues was happening because there was no platform where stakeholders in the medical oxygen space could come together to discuss the research-policy interface and see how to contextualise some of the strategies against the problems for the country.

“That is why, in this phase of this project, we have decided to start with this kind of stakeholders’ engagement. I am excited that we have every key stakeholder in the medical oxygen space represented here,” Uneke said.

He opined that the project started its first phase by carrying out intervention work in three industrial areas of the state: quarry industrial site in Onueke, rice mill in Abakaliki, and timber market.

This project has to do with respiratory health, and the idea is to come up with strategies that will lead to interventions that will improve health outcomes as far as respiratory health is concerned.

9,850 professional Nigerian pharmacists moved to countries like Canada, the UK, Australia and, to a much lesser extent, the USA and some Asian territories, in the last five years in search of better paychecks.

This was disclosed by the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, (ACPN) during their 45th Annual National Scientific Conference at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Scientific Conference Centre in Abuja.

The National Chairman of the association, Ambrose Ezeh, described the trend as a major threat to Nigeria’s healthcare system and pharmaceutical industry.

Ezeh said that records at the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, PSN, National Secretariat showed that about 9,000 pharmacists exited Nigeria in the four and a half years preceding December 2026, while over 850 more obtained letters of good standing from the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, PCN, in the first six months of 2026 alone.

He attributed the development to poor remuneration, weak workforce development plans and the failure to fully enforce the National Drug Distribution Guidelines introduced in 2015.