11th April, 2011
Lagos State joined the rest of the world at the weekend to mark this yearâ€
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had slated 7 April of every year as World Health Day to provide unique opportunities for communities across the world to come together on one day to focus attention on a global health threat and to promote actions that can improve our health.
The state government used to occasion to stress the need for pharmaceutical firms in the state to be responsible in their marketing of medicine, promoting proper use of medicine as well as the need to work with public and private partners to develop new tools to detect and treat diseases.
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, urged patients and members of the public to adopt health-seeking habits in order to contain the menace of drug resistance and ensure the effectiveness of medicines for the future, just as he called on health practitioners to be disciplined in their prescription, sale and distribution of medicines.
“This yearâ€
“Drug resistance can impose huge cost on individuals, health system and society and if left unaddressed, while it could leave us with little or no medicine to treat infection and effectively take us back to a pre-antibiotic era,†he said.
According to the commissioner, the goal of this yearâ€
“Governmentâ€
He noted that the state government, through its regulatory agencies such as the Health Facility and Accreditation Monitoring Agency (HEFAAMA), the Task Force on Counterfeit and Fake Drug and other health reforms, policies and programmes, had made numerous strides in sanitising healthcare delivery including the chaotic drug distribution network in the state.
“We are at a turning point in the way we treat infections and health medicines to ensure the supply of safe, efficacious and quality drugs to our citizenry. We will continue to embrace the benefits, challenges and consequence this can have for health. We can take action now to ensure that drug resistance is contained,†he added.