We’re committed to safeguarding Nigerians’ health- NAFDAC DG

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says it is committed to safeguarding the health of Nigerians through proper monitoring of sales of drugs in the markets.

Its Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, made the assertion in an interview on Tuesday in Abuja.

Adeyeye said: “NAFDAC will ensure it safeguards the health of the nation by ensuring that whatever product bought from any of its regulated products is of high quality.

“There was an instance of an elderly person that used anti-malaria tablet and the person could not walk.

“Then, I asked if the person had a stroke, but they said 'No'; very likely, it is linked to a fake medicine.”

Adeyeye said NAFDAC’s job is to ensure consumers have confidence when they go out to buy medicine, adding that it was a 24/7 activity working around the clock to ensure consumers’ confidence.

According to her, a lot of our products here in Nigeria come from China and India and we have agents, we call it “Clean Report Inspection Analyst Agent (CRIA)’’.

She said that CRIA was saddled with the responsibility of testing drugs coming into Nigeria before they left the shores of those countries.

“What we did in September 2019 was to go to India and China, and the plan was to meet with the CRIA, but we change our modules-Operandi because their CRIA has some plans they used under them.

“We conclude that we were going to be dealing with personality, meet persons to persons and laboratories.

“There are some laboratories in India and China which may not have the capacity to test one product or the other or to perform a test.

“We usually do a series of tests, and they will claim they have done it.

“I read a riot act to them that you cannot be shipping drugs to our country to kill our people.

“`We have an agreement with CRIA, and we will break up the agreement if they cannot perform,’’ Adeyeye said.

The NAFDAC boss said not all the manufacturers were compromising standard, pointing out that only one or two agents were compromising the standard.