1.

Assessment of Ciba-Geigy situation in Nigeria

1.1 General information about Nigeria Nigeria is the country which is located in West Africa. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, as many as one if five Africans was a Nigerian. The living conditions in Nigeria are very poor, 80 percent populations lived in rural village and squalid shanty towns and only 20 percent populations could live in the urban areas. As a result, the health and health care are poor as well. Its oil reserves have brought great revenues to the country. However, political instability always put their economic conditions into an uncertainty level. Due to this economic difficulty, the Nigerian health care system is continuously faced with a shortage of doctors and medical equipment. 1.2 Pharmaceutical market in Nigeria

Although the market had grown rapidly between 1976 and 1981, since then, it was altogether disastrous years for the market. The supplies of the pharmaceutical market were evenly divided between local manufacture and imported repackaging finished products. Most of transactions are from private sectors, and only 20 percent transaction from institutional purchases. Nigerian pharmaceutical market was characterized by heavy OTC supply. Patent medicine stores are important distribution channels which are responsible for a large proportion of OTC sales. Ciba-Geigy is not a stranger to the Nigerias market. Ciba-Geigy and its predecessor companies had been in Nigeria since the 1950s. They used to have three business areas: 1) ethical products (core business) 2) proprietary, nonprescription OTC products 3)

Servipharm. They also entered the self-medication OTC market in 1983.

1.3

Disease and Treatment

Malaria remains one of the worlds most deadly infectious diseases and arguably, the greatest menace to modern society in terms of morbidity and mortality. Malaria is a major public health problem in Nigeria where it accounts for more cases and deaths than any other country in the world. Though preventable, treatable and curable, there is no known immunity. Chloroquine which prevents the development of malaria parasites in the blood had been used for over 50 years. It has no longer been recommended for long-term prophylaxis, since using over a number of years had been linked to damage to the retina. Moreover, Malaria strains resistant to Chloroquine were appearing when it is using as prophylactic. Higher doses could solve this problem. However, the higher doses, the higher toxicity of Chloroquine. Cautions of using were required since the margin of safety between therapeutic and toxic doses of Chloroquine was very narrow. In fact, there were some other antimalarial available. However, multidrug combinations were often more expensive, with more side effects, and resistance to these alternative antimalarial was also emerging. In the long run, new vaccine against malaria would be expected to be developed.