Healthcare services · Pharmaceutical distribution
Remedial Health
A Lagos company that sells wholesale medicine to Nigerian pharmacies and lends them the money to stock it. Its central promise is provenance. The record shows where that promise is thinner than the pitch.
Where Nigerian pharmacies buy
A Nigerian pharmacist who needs to restock does not call a national wholesaler, because there is none to call. She goes to a market. Three matter: Idumota in Lagos, Onitsha in Anambra, and Kano. She walks the stalls, haggles, carries cash, and carries the boxes home.
Samuel Okwuada has described the arithmetic of that trip: a buyer working through twenty or thirty individual distributors to assemble one order. Investors backing his company put the share of wholesale buying done in open markets at 90 per cent, in premises they call largely unfit for medicines.
The markets are not incidental to the counterfeit problem. They are the mechanism. Every extra hand between a factory and a shelf is a place where a substituted carton can enter, and a place where a real carton can sit in the heat until it stops working. Remedial Health sells the alternative: an app, a catalogue, a warehouse, a van, and credit.
The number under the pitch
Ask how big the problem is and the answer depends on who is counting, and when. The World Health Organization estimated in 2017 a 10.5 per cent failure rate across medical products in low and middle income countries, from more than 100 surveys covering 48,000 samples. A 2026 systematic review in PLOS Global Public Health pooled about 18 per cent for maternal, newborn and child health medicines and antimalarials in Africa, nearly double the WHO figure. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime puts the toll at up to 500,000 deaths a year in sub-Saharan Africa.
Nigeria has its own history with the number, and it is a history of decline. NAFDAC, the national regulator, states in its own account that a survey it ran with the WHO and the UK Department for International Development found counterfeit medicines at 16.7 per cent in 2005, against 40 per cent in 2001. It set a target of no more than 5 per cent by 2025 and conceded Nigeria was overdue a fresh survey.
Okwuada has generally used the older, larger figure. In April 2023 he called counterfeiting a 40 per cent problem and said NAFDAC put it at 41 per cent. In August 2023 he applied that rate to his own volumes. By January 2026 his public number had fallen to over 30 per cent. Two independent sources reporting on the company in 2023, TechCrunch and its lead investor Ventures Platform, both cited NAFDAC's more recent estimate at about 15 per cent.
The gap matters: its most quotable achievement is derived from the multiplier, not measured.
A pharmacist who could code
Okwuada wanted to be a pilot. Pharmacy, he has said, was a negotiation with his parents. He learned HTML at thirteen and sold two businesses before graduating from the University of East Anglia.
He came home with a pharmacy degree and no intention of practising, and asked Nigerian firms to let him work for free so he could learn the market. Adpharm took him up in 2015 and paired him with its best sales representative, Victor Benjamin, whom Okwuada has called the encyclopaedia of Nigerian medicines. The two sold medicines out of Benjamin's car across Lagos and Ogun states. When COVID closed the markets, the import business they later built together became a platform.
Three rounds in eighteen months
Y Combinator took the company into its Winter 2022 batch. In February 2022 a $1 million pre-seed arrived, co-led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, with Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital and angels including Flutterwave's Olugbenga Agboola. The company was in six states with about 300 pharmacies ordering.
By September 2022 it was in sixteen states and raised $4.4 million in an oversubscribed seed led by Global Ventures, with Tencent, Y Combinator, Cathexis Ventures, a Lightspeed scout fund, Alumni Ventures and True Capital Management. In August 2023 came $12 million: $8 million of equity co-led by QED Investors and Ventures Platform, plus $4 million of debt attributed only to a consortium of financial institutions, none named to this day. Nothing has been announced since.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| NAFDAC registration | None in the company’s name found in searches to Sep 24, 2026. It presents itself as a buyer from registered manufacturers rather than a registration holder, and publishes no licence number. | Not found |
| Verification, as described | In January 2026 the CEO described mobile authentication scratch cards letting customers confirm a pack by text. That is NAFDAC’s Mobile Authentication Service, listed by the agency among its own tools alongside Truscan and the GPHF Minilab, and carried on manufacturer packaging. | Company-stated |
| Sourcing | Says it buys direct from manufacturers and certified distributors, naming GSK, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Orange Drugs, Emzor and Fidson Healthcare. Suppliers rose from 100 plus in 2022 to 300 plus in 2023. No named manufacturer has confirmed publicly. | Company-stated |
| Counterfeit rate, as cited by the company | 40 and 41 per cent in April 2023, applied as a multiplier that August, over 30 per cent by January 2026. NAFDAC records 40 per cent in 2001 and 16.7 per cent in 2005. TechCrunch and Ventures Platform both put the regulator’s recent figure near 15 per cent. | Differs from the regulator |
| Counterfeit rate, independent | WHO 2017: 10.5 per cent failure across low and middle income countries. PLOS Global Public Health 2026: pooled 18 per cent for MNCH medicines and antimalarials in Africa. UNODC: up to 500,000 deaths a year in sub-Saharan Africa. | Public record |
| Scale | 300 pharmacies (2021), more than 3,000 (Dec 2022), more than 5,000 in 34 states (Jul 2023), 7,500 in all 36 states and 300 million packs (2023). All company-reported, none audited, none updated since April 2024. | Company-stated |
| Credit book | 97.5 per cent repayment reported in September 2022, under contracts permitting repossession the company said it had never used. Pharmacies repay in 14 days, hospitals 30, government institutions 60. No audited loss figure published. | Company-stated |
| Securities filings | One Form D touches the company: Gaingels Remedial Health LLC, a Vermont vehicle, sold $80,000 to 11 investors, first sale Feb 7 and filing Feb 14, 2023. Remedial Health files none of its own. | Public record |
| Debt and development finance | The $4 million debt tranche was attributed only to a consortium of local and international financial institutions. No lender has been named, and no development finance institution has disclosed an exposure. | Not found |
| Founding date | Published years run 2016 (Salient Advisory), 2020 (TechCrunch, Disrupt Africa), 2021 (Y Combinator, TechCabal) and 2022 (Techpoint Africa). The company’s own timeline: decision September 2020, launch March 2021. | Sources disagree |
Read plainly: the logistics are real and independently described, the capital is real and named, and the counterfeit thesis is sound in direction. Absent are any regulatory credential of the company’s own, any manufacturer confirming the supply relationship, any named lender behind the credit book, and any independent count of customers. A distributor selling provenance is asking to be audited on exactly those four things.
What to watch
- A published NAFDAC licence number for the distribution entity itself.
- Any of the six named manufacturers confirming the relationship in its own words.
- The lenders behind the $4 million debt tranche, and whether any development finance institution is among them.
- A funding or operating update. The last substantive news is the April 2024 app release.
- NAFDAC’s overdue prevalence survey, which would replace a 2001 number still doing commercial work.
In their words
“To navigate this challenge, we work directly with manufacturers and certified distributors.”
Samuel Okwuada, to Disrupt Africa, July 2022 · Interview
“If you apply the 40% counterfeit rule, it means that as a company, we replaced 40 million counterfeit drugs in the Nigeria market”
Samuel Okwuada, to TechCabal, August 2023 · Independent
“A study of counterfeit and substandard medicines in Nigeria conducted by NAFDAC in collaboration with World Health Organization (WHO) and Department for International Development (DFID) in 2005 revealed that counterfeit medicines stood at 16.7% in 2005 as against 40% in 2001.”
NAFDAC, Director General’s statement on substandard and falsified medicines · Regulator
“Substandard and falsified medicines particularly affect the most vulnerable communities,”
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, November 2017 · WHO
“If patients are getting medicines that are substandard or outright fake, it can result in their treatment failing or even preventable deaths,”
Claudia Martínez, head of research, Access to Medicine Foundation, to The Guardian, 2024 · Independent
“Right now, the goal is to deepen our presence in Nigeria. We have about 10% of the market share. So, we have a very long way to go before we start thinking of expanding to other countries”
Samuel Okwuada, to TechCabal, August 2023 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Gaingels Remedial Health LLC, CIK 0001965233
- Public recordCurbing Substandard, Falsified (SFS) And Counterfeit Medicines
- Public record1 in 10 medical products in developing countries is substandard or falsified
- Public recordNearly one in five essential medicines fail quality standards in Africa
- IndependentFifth of medicines in Africa may be sub-par or fake, research finds
- IndependentYC-backed Remedial Health raises $1 million pre-seed
- IndependentNigeria’s YC-backed Remedial Health raises $4.4M seed funding
- IndependentNigeria’s Remedial Health gets QED backing in $12M round
- IndependentRemedial Health raises $12 million in series A round
- IndependentHow Nigeria’s Remedial Health is making Africa’s pharmaceutical sector more efficient
- InterviewFounders’ Spotlight with Samuel Okwuada
- InterviewThe Coffee Table with Samuel Okwuada
- InvestorA Milestone Investment: Remedial Health Series A Funding
- CompanyRemedial Health about page and company timeline
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
