The Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics was one of the foundation department of the Faculty of Medicine established in 1967. It started teaching pioneer medical students in 1972. The department currently has 9 academic staff (3 on secondment) including 2 professors, one reader and 4 senior lecturers. 3 academic staff are honorary consultants to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital. Two honorary consultants are in charge of the clinical pharmacology and therapeutics unit which takes care of inpatients and outpatients at UNTH as well as providing ward/clinic-based teaching/training in general medicine and clinical pharmacology for medical students, house officers and residents.

Two medical laboratory technologists with six technical support staff oversee the running and maintenance of equipment in the laboratories for medical student’s practical sessions and postgraduate research.

The department enjoys a large infrastructure including two bungalow buildings (office block and main teaching laboratory) and a large storey building with a storage area (basement), ground floor clinical research ward and upper floor for offices, a research laboratory, computer facilities and internet connectivity. The teaching and research laboratories have accumulated a large stock of equipment including organ baths, kymographs, spectrophotometer, centrifuges, high performance liquid chromatography, and immunoblotting, teaching microscopes, radio-isotope and photon detectors.

The department plays a pivotal role in teaching and examining undergraduate medical students, as well as medical laboratory science students from the sister Faculty of Health Sciences and Technology. The undergraduate medical curriculum in Pharmacology and Therapeutics is currently being reviewed and expanded to span most of the duration of the clinical course. This will enable better integration of Pharmacology and Therapeutics with other courses and teaching in wards, clinics and theatres.

The department has been a pace-setter in postgraduate teaching and research, running both Masters and Ph.D. programmes. An MD programme is also available to medically qualified candidates with a Master’s Degree. There is a wide scope of academic and research interests within the department, encompassing the pharmacotherapeutics of major communicable (malaria, Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection, onchocerciasis) and non-communicable diseases (hypertension, diabetes mellitus), as well as the newer fields of pharmaco-epidemiology, pharmaco-economics, health policy and ethno pharmacology. The department has been involved in pioneering research to enable the use of ivermectin for onchocerciasis and the use of a promising new viral/cell adhesion blocker from a local medicinal plant source for the treatment of viral infections (including HIV/AIDS) and malaria.