Consider poor electricity, storage facilities before purchasing vaccines, PSN urges FG

The president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, has cautioned the federal government to consider Nigeria’s storage facilities and situation of electricity before procuring COVID-19 vaccines.

Mazi Sam said that it would be tough to store vaccines at minus 70 centigrade in Nigeria, considering the ability to manage the logistics, to store them safely and move them from port to hospital, clinics, and pharmacists where they will be administered to the patients and Nigerians.

He further advised that Oxford/Astrazeneca and Russia’s sputnik vaccines can be stored at normal temperatures, in fridges which is fairly suitable to the Nigerian reality.

The executive director of the national primary healthcare development agency, Faisal Shuaib, had disclosed last week that the country would later in the year receive 42 million free doses of COVID-19 vaccines.