By Steve Aborisade
Thursday July 19, 2006

South African pharmaceutical manufactures, Aspen Group, with an eye on the Nigerian retroviral market is facing a major scandal of stocking and shipping HIV drugs along anti-diabet drugs in the same product containers.

Aspen Lamivudine 150mg tablets used in the treatment of HIV cases is a major product of the group and which is expected to be imported into the country to help support the care of 75,000 Nigerians currently under treatment programs. Nigeria has about 6million HIV positive cases.

The current stocking and shipping scandal relates to the mixed containerization of Lamivudine and Glycron (Gliclazade 80mg) tablets used for treating diabetics. Medical experts say this error, if unresolved before it gets to patients, could lead to deaths. An Aspen alert from its South African office in the possession of NigeriaHIVinfo.com shares this fear. In a statement signed by Chris Stubbs, Aspen said in the event that the medications are misapplied, “symptoms may range from uneasiness, hunger, and sweating through hypoglycoemic coma which may be fatal”.

Aspen Group is represented in Nigeria through EBS, a relatively new comer to the Nigerian pharmacare scene but nonetheless a muscled player which won one of the four controversial bids early this month to import retroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

EBS sources could not be located for comments but Federal officials were yesterday downplaying the impact on the grounds that the retroviral imports the Ministry of Health ordered had not arrived in Nigeria yet. Mr. Olowodola, a senior aide of the Health Minister told NigeriaHIVinfo.com  yesterday that the order process has not been consummated because it had not gone through the “due process” department that the Obasanjo administration put in place to control corruption so pervasive in the Nigerian contract system.

Olowodola said it will take about a month for this process to be concluded, although he also said EBS was not one of the four bid winners. Industry sources however disagree with Olowodola on this but the apparent lack of a sunshine process on the contract has continued to fuel the debate.

Among the first public expression of concern to follow in the trails of this scandal is the comment of Oba Oladapo, Secretary of the Treatment Action Movement (TAM), a civic group pushing for greater access for HIV/AIDS treatment in the Country.

Oladapo called for extreme caution and vigilance to ensure that none of these shipments gets into the Nigerian port system and that regulators be alert that the products don’t get into the market until the error is corrected. In the opinion of a concerned party, “problems as this is what the Ministry of Health could have avoided if they have seen the wisdom in developing local industry by patronizing Nigerian companies who manufacture ARV and whose products compare favorably with whatever is being imported from abroad”.