By Zayamu Hassan
The Guild of Medical Laboratory Directors (GMLD), said that Nigeria has the manpower, capacity and human resources to provide vaccines of different types in the country.
The President of the group, Prince Elochukwu Adibo, stated this when he paid a courtesy visit to the Ona of Abaji and Chairman of the FCT Council of Traditional Rulers, Alhaji Adamu Jaba Yunusa, in Abaji.
He noted that in the late 1960s and early 1990s, Nigeria produced vaccines that tackled Small Pox.
“Nigeria has no business importing vaccines, we can produce any human vaccine in the country, we have the capacity, manpower and human resources to do so. Laboratory Scientists in Nigeria have done it in the past and can still do it today,” he said.
Prince Adibo recalled that medical laboratory scientists in Nigeria produced Small Pox vaccine at the Yaba Vaccine Centre, supervised by World Health Organisation (WHO), some years ago.
The vaccine, he said, was exported to other countries in West African during the peak of the fight against Small Pox in the 1960s up to the early 1990s.
He, therefore, called on the federal government, to, as a matter of urgency, revive the vaccine centre in Yaba – Lagos, reiterating that any nation that depends on foreign vaccines, is toying with the health of its citizens.
“Global politics on vaccine production, availability and accessibility is not favourable to under-developed nations, as developed nations that produce the vaccines have discriminatory and protective tendencies against less privileged countries who cannot afford to produce human vaccines, because they want to make the vaccines available to their citizens before considering other nations.”
Prince Adibo further reiterated that Nigeria has no business importing the COVID-19 vaccine and indeed, any other vaccine into the country.
According to him, the visit was to invite the royal father to the GMLD forthcoming National Scientific Conference with a theme, ‘Harnessing Awareness of Public Private Mix for the Production of Human Vaccine in In-Vitro Diagnostics.’
He said the conference seek to enable stakeholders find a final solution to producing local human vaccines in Nigeria.
