Director-General of the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency and a professor of Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine, Martins Emeje, speaks with YUSUFF MOSHOOD about how to address pressing issues within Nigeria’s traditional medicine sector As you approach the completion of your first year as the director-general and chief executive of the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency, could you provide insights into the transformative measures undertaken by NNMDA during your tenure so far to advance traditional medicine practices in Nigeria? To answer this question properly, let me first restate the blueprint I submitted, which was part of the reason I was given this job. The blueprint includes a commitment to forge strong collaboration between academia and industry; develop a robust intellectual property regime for natural medicine; pilot the agency’s training institution away from paper to practical qualifications; institutionalise grantsmanship to reduce or totally remove the burden of funding from the government and establish a drug manufacturing company registrable with the CAC. Other components of the blueprint include undertaking clinical trials of indigenous medicines; establishing the first public herbal pharmacy in Nigeria; connecting with the chemical, food, and pharmaceutical industries; organising business summits with the industries, entrepreneurs, TMPs, universities, colleges of education, polytechnics, hospitals, NGOs, as well as creating NNMDA fellows.
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