By Tunde Thomas
To stem the tide of increasing deaths arising from adverse reactions to drug use, the Federal Government has been told to fund universities to carry out research into personalised medicine.
Prof. Chinedum Peace Babalola, Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ibadan, who made the appeal at the 14th Annual National Conference and Scientific Meeting of Nigeria Association of Pharmacists in Academia (NAPA) at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Olabisi Onabanjo Universiy, Sagamu, Ogun State, said the increasing fatalities resulting from adverse reaction to drug use could be averted through personalised medicine.
She said both drugs, and human beings that take them react in different ways.
“A drug that is suitable for a particular individual may cause adverse reaction in another, but with personalised medicine, a lot of lives would be saved from premature deaths.”
Citing the case of the death of a 14-year-old girl in Kano State, Amina Ibrahim, who died as a result of adverse reaction to drug use, and other reported cases of patients dying from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, Babalola said subjecting individuals to personalised medicine would have averted the tragic cases.
“Personalised medicine involves genetic testing to predict how a patient will respond to a given medication. It can also help identify a patient’s risk for adverse effects or toxicity from a particular drug or possibility of therapeutic failure, and this is why universities need to be encouraged to undertake more research into this field of medicine,” she declared.
Advising members of the public to stop patronising hawkers or quacks, the don said: “One of the ways to avoid cases of patients suffering from adverse reaction to drug use is for people to patronise professionally trained pharmacists, who are in the best position to advise and counsel them on drug use.
“Whenever any complaint arises from drug use, it is the professional pharmacists that will be able to proffer solution and not the quacks.’’
Calling for collaboration between the government and other stakeholders in the health sector, Babalola noted that there was an urgent need to enlighten members of the public on the danger adverse drug reaction poses to people’s health and the need to promptly report such cases to relevant authorities.