In the light of the problems of adequate health care bedevilling Africa, The Director of Centre for Drug Discovery, Development and Production (CDDDP), Professor Chinedum Peace Babalola has revealed that the major challenge affecting quality health care in Africa is poor access to essential medicines, especially among rural dwellers in Africa.

Professor Babalola made this revelation during her welcome address at the international conference organised by CDDDP on the theme: Improving Access to Quality Medicines through Appropriate Legislations and Policies.

While welcoming guests to the conference, the CDDDP Boss explained that poor access to essential drugs is the major reason for high mortality rate in Africa. She noted that one of the reasons why access to medicines is difficult is because of their expensiveness and inaccessibility to many rural dwellers.  

Prof Babalola stated that it is time for a critical appraisal of the access to quality medicines in order to ensure better health care in Africa, hence the need for the international conference to address the issue.

She further noted that some of the objectives of the conference are to review policies guiding access to medicine in Nigeria; to identify the challenges affecting access to essential medicines in Nigeria as well as to promote quick access to quality medicines in Africa.

Details soon…