Under the umbrella: ‘Drugstores’ on the roadside’

“Does your nose run?” asks the “doctor”. He then asks if Idris has eaten and whether he’d be awake by awake by 10pm. Time is 7.53pm. Idris says yes. The “doctor” gets a pair of scissors and sorts three separate drug sachets from his stock. He snips one tablet from each sachet to make a […]

“Does your nose run?” asks the “doctor”. He then asks if Idris has eaten and whether he’d be awake by awake by 10pm. Time is 7.53pm. Idris says yes. The “doctor” gets a pair of scissors and sorts three separate drug sachets from his stock. He snips one tablet from each sachet to make a single dose. Three more rapid snips produce a second dose—co-trimoxazole (Septrin), paracetamol, Sudrex (both the same drug) and piriton.
“Take this one now,” he says, placing one dose in Idris’s palm, familiar as a confidante. “Take the other at 10 before you sleep.”
Idris asks for his bill and produces a N50 note. It covers cost for the two doses, says the “doctor”, and Idris goes happily home.
The “doctor” is Yakubu Faruk. The drugs he dispenses are packed in a basket, lined with old medicine packaging, placed on top of a stool on the roadside along Abacha Road in Mararaba. It is not a hospital.
An umbrella is at hand for when the rains come. It also shades his drugs against sunshine by day. By night, a rechargeable lantern lights his wares—a colourful mishmash of antibiotics, pain relievers, blood tonics, condoms and aphrodisiacs.
It is difficult to place Faruk at any point of health care in Nigeria. He’s not a proprietary patent medicine vendor, which would require him to register with the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria. Authorities simply regard him as a drug hawker.
They are not the headaches of PCN, but efforts to control them and even put them out of business have been a mandate for the National Food and Drug Administration and Control. NAFDAC, which regulates food and drugs, has been steeped in battle with open drug markets, the open but seemingly underground sale of drugs funnelled through major cities as Onitsha, Kano and Aba.
Open drug markets supply Faruk, and the trust he and his colleagues are increasingly commanding is worrisome. Their biggest sell is offer of seemingly high impact drugs at rock-bottom prices that anyone can afford.
It translates as cheap treatment, says Ngo Chingdung, explaining the draw. “If you go there with N100, you will be fine. If you go to pharmacy, they will write medicines for you, up to N1,000.”
She met Faruk to complain of unspecific stomach discomfort, and was given a dose of Buscopan and Loperamide (an anti-dirrhoea medication, which Faruk called “diarrhoea-stop”.
“Take one tablet of each this night, and another dose in the morning after breakfast,” he explains. Total cost: N70. That was even before asking whether Ngo Chingdung was pregnant. Then he launches into his own explanation of what to expect in pregnancy. He can’t give an exact time he started his business. But he considers himself a “graduate” of medicine trade, Faruk says, using the Hausa word for drugs.
Tall, in flowing jalabiya, he is proud of his achievements, which include a certificate he is meant to collect soon enough. He claims his drugs ought to cover an entire table—more extensive than a basket—if only he wasn’t left behind by a friend to manage the business. He’s even spent time learning how to administer injections and drips, Faruk proudly adds.
Before Idris, the other two “patients” visiting Faruk are also convinced customers. One repeat customer asks for capsules of Ampiclox (ampicillin+cloxacillin) and insists on a popular brand. She’s given two options: one capsule at N50 each and another at N25.
Patent medicine vendors or chemist would sell the capsules in complete dose, requiring her to buy more than a sachet at once. But with Faruk, she can buy single capsules when she needs it.
“They feel if they go to chemist or hospital, they will pay more,” explains pharmacist Antonia Aruya, PCN’s director of inspection and monitoring. “These drugs are just by the roadside. Rather than go for proper diagnosis, they prefer the seemingly cheap alternative.”
There’s also another reason Faruk continues to command the attention of mainly male “patients”. His basket is layered with bright packages that depict the male body form in proportions amazing enough to put a regular male to shame on account of inadequacy.
“A good number of drugs they sell is aphrodisiacs—that people will not be willing to go to chemists to purchase,” says Aruya. “Not everybody wants people to know they are impotent or cannot perform satisfactorily. They get it by the roadside and use it at will.”
But drug hawkers are known for the way they recommend drugs, without dubious knowledge of the content of medicine packs. They will need training to understand active ingredients. Without that, they sell by brand names. “They give it out in cocktail—two of every type of drug they know is indicated for that kind of pain and they mix everything together and tell you to take it. Of course you will have some immediate relief, but the long-term relief is the damage to the kidney, liver, several organs, which many unsuspecting public are unaware of,” says Aruya.
The danger experts see is that customers buying drugs by the roadside are paying for convenience and more risks. “It’s an old issue,” NAFDAC head of communications Jimoh Abubakar told Weekly Trust in August when a previous ran about drug hawkers invading city buses. “We have said times without number, since NAFDAC was created, that Nigerians should not patronise them because of the health hazard. What may cost less will cost you more in the hospital.”
Beyond that, no official of the agency directly involved with drug hawkers could be reached for comment. Bringing them under control requires political will to provide fund and to allow task forces to prosecute offender, says Peter Iliya, a pharmacist and communications director for PCN.
“NAFDAC is not succeeding and the simple reason is that, one, the government does not have the political will to tackle the open drug market and, secondly, corruption.” Which means open-season: Faruk has become a fixture on Abacha Road, and, with increasing confidence—in his advice, medication, recommendation—“patients” bring him their ailments.