Akunyili misses out on health post
02-Jan-2009Professor Dora Akunyili, the former head of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has been made Minister of Information in the recent government reshuffle.
Akunyili had been tipped as a likely candidate to become Minister of Health, and a number of commentators in the Nigerian press have expressed concern that the NAFDAC’s offensive against drug counterfeiting could lose its momentum once she moves away from the healthcare portfolio.
Prior to 2002, over half the medicines traded in Nigeria were thought to be counterfeit, with a rate of 80 per cent estimated in some areas of the country That number is now thought to be under 20 per cent and falling.
