Raila: Covid-19 is a wake-up call to support local drug companies

Raila Odinga (L) with COSMOS Pharmaceutical Managing Director Vimal Patel and Regional Marketing Manager Susan Okoma

 

 

 

ODM leader Raila Odinga (pictured) has said dependency on imports is crippling local industries and urged people to buy medical supplies made in Kenya.

Raila said the coronavirus pandemic and the challenge the country had accessing personal protective equipment, ventilators and reagents used in testing should be reason enough for Kenya to build local capacity.

“We had a very traumatic experience when Covid-19 struck and we were not able to cope with the challenges. 

It was a wake-up call for us as a country that we need to be self-reliant in essential drug manufacturing,” the former Prime Minister said yesterday.

Raila said addressing local manufacturing had become a chorus to an unending song.

“We have talked about addressing local manufacturing for many years. Some of the initiatives put in place have collapsed and we went back to importing everything,” he said. 

The former premier said there are generic drugs that can be manufactured locally without the need to pay licence fees.

Raila was speaking at Cosmos Limited, a Kenyan manufacturer of pharmaceutical products, when he visited the drug maker’s plant in Industrial Area.

He said Kenyan policymakers needed to move away from dependency on imports, a practice which he said had left local companies languishing and more Kenyans unemployed.

“We do not have confidence in our own manufacturing capacity so we import things that are actually manufactured locally. 

The capacity exists here but we are not using it effectively,” said Raila.

He said that by importing Kenya is inadvertently exporting jobs to foreign countries, yet there are millions of unemployed Kenyans.

Create employment

“If you import you are actually exporting jobs to the country from whom you are importing, yet you have your own people who are capable of doing it and who have the capacity and equipment available locally,” he said.

“My challenge would be to those who are charged with the responsibility (of deciding what Kenya will import) to think Kenyan, buy Kenyan and build Kenya because if you do so you create employment locally.”

Raila said reliance on locally produced medicines would prevent a repeat of corruption cases such as the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority scandal where companies benefited from tenders to supply Covid-19 emergency commodities.