The Federal Government has commissioned the largest medical warehouse in Abuja. The facility named “Premier Medical Warehouse” is to be used as a medical storage facility to drugs and other medical commodities procured by Federal Government of Nigeria or donated by partners before final distribution to the end users.
Commissioning the facility on Monday 14th August, 2017, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole said that the facility was a product of joint effort between the Federal Government and partners. “I want to declare publically that within this country, I am yet to see facility like this, so I truly agree that this is the work of our partnership”.
Adewole explained that there are three things that constitute good health system, Human Resources, Drugs/ Commodities available in the facility and Data emanating from the facility. The three things are complementing one another and it is only when the three are put to gather that a strong health system would have been built.
“A facility that have human resources and there are no commodities, people will go there only once, they are not likely to come back, if there is no data you cannot really fine tune what is going on, you cannot determine progress and so to me what we are doing is actually to put in place a strong system that will deliver commodity in good qualities or in good shape to our people”.
The Minister thanked the US Government and Globalfund for supporting the project. He assured that the Ministry will work with private stakeholders in the management of the facility. He said that the facility in Abuja will take care of the northern part of the country while the other one in Lagos would services the entire southern part of the Nigeria.
Adewole said “for us in the Ministry we would ensure that we put all that is necessary to ensure that this facility is put to use, we would advertise it, we would let people know and we would provide oversight for the management”.
The Minister said that facility would also provide opportunity for building capacity so that overtime, the Ministry would be able to replicate it in other part of the country.
In his remark the US Mission Director in Nigeria, Mr. Stephen Haykins said that the Premier Warehouse in Abuja and Lagos would overcome the challenges of warehousing and distribution of drugs in Nigeria.
