By Biodun Azeez (300 Level)
A professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Jos, Musa Ibrahim has called for vigilance by manufacturers to monitor fake and adulterated drugs and unwanted reactions from their products.
Delivering the 56th Inaugural Lecture of the university, he said such time had come for pharmaceutical manufactures to take the responsibility of monitoring cases of unwanted reactions regarding their products, adding that such monitoring should be sincere and honest as it will solve the problem of fake and adulterated drugs facing the pharmaceutical environment in developing countries.
Professor Ibrahim whose lecture was entitled “Self Thinking Medicines: Automating Pharmacotherapy for Eliminating Unwanted Effects” called on governments to sponsor pharmaceutical scientists to well-equipped advanced laboratories of the developed nations to acquire the need skills for these tasks.
He described self thinking medicine as “systems/medicines that directly sense the state of the patient and then deliver an intervention without human action”, adding that when people fall sick, they require therapeutic or surgical intervention or both to get well again.
“The therapeutic intervention could be in the form of pharmacotherapy i.e. administering of drugs to the sick, which make it impossible for health service to be sustained without drugs.
The physiologic and pathologic profiles in an individual (the functioning of living organism and causes of diseases in an individual) vary from time of the day to another thus the blood sugar level of a diabetics patient, for example, varies at different time of the day. The administration of anti-diabetics like insulin to such a patient should therefore be continuously adjusted accordingly” he added
Ibrahim who is the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Administration of the university, stated further that natural and synthetic polymeric materials have been used frequently in the development of advanced drug system and that Nigeria is blessed with abundant sources of natural polymers, many of which are used as edible soups like okra, ogbono. okoho; carbohydrates from our food material like the tubers and grains; cellulose from many fibrous materials and their waste like sugar cane, groundnut and rice husks; proteins from animal skin and bones among others.
In his remark, Vice Chancellor of the university Prof. Hayward Mafuyai congratulated Professor Ibrahim whom he described as a renown scholar of international repute for his “expert delivery”.
He encouraged other professors yet to deliver their inaugural lecture to do so, as it does not only contribute to knowledge within the university, but also serves as link with other universities within the country and abroad.
