Commentary: Preventing pregnancy after unprotected sex: What options for Nigerian women?

For Nigerians in need of them, obtaining viable, unadulterated pharmaceutical products has become much more difficult since the IMF/World Bank policies of structural adjustment destroyed the indigenous Nigerian pharmaceutical industry in the late 1980s. Structural adjustment policies called for a high tax on imported raw materials and the devaluation of the naira; between them these policies wiped out 65 per cent of local firms manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Local drug manufacturing meets only 20 per cent of the nation’s health needs; 80 per cent of drugs are imported. Nearly half (48 per cent) of all drugs in circulation in 2001 were found to be counterfeit or substandard. Nigeria currently imports all raw materials for drug manufacture at very high cost. Public consumption of drugs declined dramatically following the liberalization of the sale of drugs and the introduction of user fees at health facilities (two more structural adjustment policies). Outside of major cities like Lagos and Abuja, there are few pharmacies. Over 90 per cent of all pharmacies are in urban areas, 30 per cent concentrated in Lagos. Some states have fewer than 25 pharmacies to serve populations of 1 million or more, and most states have almost no pharmacies in the rural areas. No hospital in Nigeria is currently registered to dispense drugs, which is the privilege of doctors who are not keen to turn over the responsibility for dispensing medicines to pharmacists. In any case, according to WHO, there were only 0.13 pharmacists per 1000 population in Nigeria in 2008 (in comparison there were 0.28 in South Africa in 2004). Patent medicine shops outnumber pharmacies. There are