Drug safety in Nigeria

Ensuring the effectiveness and safety of drug therapy is a critical component of the mission of pharmacy practice. The mission promotes delivery of pharmaceutical care to contribute to improvement of health and helping patients make the best use of their medicines (WHO, 2011b). To emphasize the importance of drug safety, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed tools to help families, patients, and caregivers greatly reduce the risks of harm associated with the use of their medication. (WHO, 2019b) As part of its global commitment to safety in health, the WHO declares every September 17, from 2019 onward as World Patient Safety Day to showcase commitments by all stakeholders in health care systems to the safety of the patient. This becomes pertinent with the revelation of 134 million adverse events occurring on an annual basis due to unsafe care in low- and middle-income countries, resulting in 2.6 million deaths (IAPO, 2019).

The patient safety, of which drug safety is a cornerstone, is a growing public health concern. Recognizing this challenge, the 72nd World Health Assembly passed a resolution in May 2019 known as resolution WHA72.6 (Global action on patient safety) (WHO, 2019a) The resolution demands global concerted effort from 194 member countries to commit to safety in health care thereby minimizing avoidable harm in health care systems, which could help to accelerate the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (IAPO, 2019). With the current WHO initiatives targeted to safeguard the lives of patients through safety in health care, evaluating drug safety in Nigeria to determine challenges and offer recommendations is a step in the right direction. This chapter, therefore, is primarily intended to explore the status of drug safety issues in Nigeria.