Antimalarials Drugs in Nigeria

Malaria is still the illness Nigerians treat most often, and nearly every household has a routine for it — a favourite ACT brand, a pharmacy that stocks it, a price they expect to pay. The standard treatment today is an artemisinin combination: artemether-lumefantrine (Coartem, Lonart, Amatem) or dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (P-Alaxin), taken as a full three-day course. Chloroquine, the old faithful of the 1980s and 90s, lost the fight to resistance and is no longer recommended for treatment, though it still sells in open markets to people who remember it fondly.

Two things matter when buying an antimalarial in Nigeria. First, complete the course — a half-finished pack is how resistance starts, and it is why some people feel malaria 'came back' within a week. Second, verify the brand: antimalarials are among the most counterfeited medicines in the country, precisely because everyone buys them. Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (Fansidar) now has one main legitimate use — preventing malaria in pregnancy at antenatal clinics — and injectable artesunate is reserved for severe cases in hospital.