Diabetes remedies: Pharmaceutical institute pledges fairness to herbalists

The National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development has ruled out any “room for suspicion” in its handling of diabetes plant remedies submitted by herbalists.

Director-general of the institute Prof Karniyus Gamaniel said on Monday it was not his intention “to disenfranchise any herbalist.” He was speaking ahead of the formal opening of the NIPRD’S N713 million headquarters at Idu, Abuja, scheduled for tomorrow.

His response came months after Oladele Abdul-Rauf, one of the herbalists who submitted remedies for diabetes accused NIPRD of shutting him out and denying him any hope of signing a memorandum of understanding after his remedy was supposedly given green light to continue in a four-year N119 million anti-diabetic medicine development project backed by the World Bank.

“For almost eight months, they did not even call. They did not even try to tell me what is happening,” Abdulrauf told Daily Trust in an exclusive interview last December.

NIPRD had received 88 anti-diabetic recipes and selected 18, which were later whittled down to four, based on analyses, ahead of possible listing with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

Gamaniel said the products on its final list could not get trademark unless they passed all five levels of testing required for herbal medicines at NIPRD.

In one particular sample, AD1, pharmacological studies in vitro [in glass] to estimate how the remedy allowed absorption of glucose was “perfect,” admitted Gamaniel, but further studies outside glass and in tissues could not proceed.

The World Bank project elapsed last June, and herbalists have since complained about the pace of progress in testing the antidiabetic medicines.