Health Minister, Prof. Eyitayo Lambo told Daily Champion that the policy change in malarial treatment "is still under review by the ministry," adding that to this end, there is an ongoing broad-based stakeholders’ consultation.

The report said government allegedly announced the ban at an interactive meeting between the Health Ministry and stakeholders on the change of malaria drug policy.

However, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN), which was at the meeting, confirmed that the minister made no such pronouncement as ban on chloroquine.

MPG-MAN chairman, Mr. Emmanuel Ebere, told Daily Champion that "the minister never announced the ban at the meeting so the report was false and misleading."

Ebere, who is also the Managing Director of Gemini Pharmaceuticals Nigeria Limited, said: "The minister announced a proposed change in malaria treatment policy in the country, "which he noted "was not feasible yet."

Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to the Minister, Mr. Ayo Osinnu, who spoke for Lambo, said "the minister never spoke of banning. The ban has not taken place."

"The minister is to set up an implementation committee cutting across the entire industry to work out a process of transition to Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACTs)," Ebere also explained, adding "we are initiating the review because chloroquine is no longer effective in malaria treatment."

"All the major stakeholders in the industry including PMG-MAN are still holding consultative meetings on the issue, but presently, we have agreed that the policy will commence inn two or three years’ time," Ebere added.

"Though statistics had shown that chloroquine has dwindling effects on users, the change has to be gradual because the new drug — Arteminisin-based Combination Therapy (ACT), is presently not available and where available, unaffordable to most people especially in the rural areas," he noted.

According to him, the raw materials which are from natural sources in China, are not easily manufactured in the country, adding that importation of drugs for malaria which is still highly prevalent in the country, has enormous implications.

However, Dr. Oludare Adeyemi of Radio-oncology Department, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH, Idi-Araba, said the change has become inevitable because a lot of people have developed resistance to chloroquine largely due to adulteration and production malpractice.

He said the envisaged policy will be very difficult to enforce "as 80 per cent of anti-malaria drugs in the country is chloroquine because it is the most effective anti-malaria treatment in Africa and the tropics."

Dr. Adeyemi, an oncologist (a specialist in cancer), regretted that over 80 per cent of the drugs are adulterated "especially those being imported."

"As a result, a lot of people have developed resistance to chloroquine leading to widespread ineffectiveness of the drug among the populace," he added.

He identified other alternatives as Cotexin, Halfan, and Quinine which he said unfortunately are not widely used because of hearing and visual problems associated with their use.

Also reacting, Consultant Haematologist and Head of the Haematologist Department of University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Dr. Anthony Emeribe, said government would be doing the right thing in banning chloroquine and Sulfadozine — Pyrimethamine as first line drugs in the treatment of malaria.

Dr. Emeribe, who is on a short training course at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Yaba, Lagos noted that evidence had shown that the first line drug, which is chloroquine, has lost its efficacy due to the emergence of chloroquine-resistant strains of Plasmodium Falciparum, the malaria parasite.

This trend, he said, was noticed as far back as 1997 in the South-Eastern part of the country.

Corroborating Dr. Emeribe’s position, chairman of Lagos State chapter of Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN), Mr. Toyosi Raheem, who is also the Chief Medical Laboratory Scientist at NIMR, said in 2003, NIMR carried out resistance studies for chloroquine in patients in all the government hospitals in Lagos, and the results showed that resistance was around 40 per cent.

This, he explained, meant that four out of every 10 people were not responding to treatment with chloroquine.

Last year, he recalled, NIMR introduced ACT, as an effective alternative to the chloroquine.

World Health Organisation (WHO) last year recommended ACTs as first line treatment for malaria even as the disease is endemic in Sub-saharan Africa.