Helen Oji
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has only received one application for a product a company is presenting for approval for the treatment of the symptoms of COVID-19, and not for the cure, Director General of agency, Professor Mojisola Christianah Adeyeye has said.
In a press statement issued in Abuja Wednesday, she said the rush to mitigate the mortality and morbidly resulting from the COVID- 19 pandemic has resulted in acceleration of product development, repurposing of formulations, off label use of therapeutics and the search for a vaccine to prevent COVID- 19.
She stated that no vaccine yet exists to prevent further spread of the virus and the huge burden of developing a cure or at best, a treatment for the deadly virus rests squarely on the shoulders of the medical world, of which Nigeria is no exception.
However, she said these claims are domiciled in either the conventional news media or the social media and a claim of a cure must be subjected to clinical evaluation through well controlled, randomised clinical trials following an approved clinical trial protocol.
“In a bid to discover a cure, therefore, the public has witnessed quite a number of claims from different quotas – complementary & alternative medicines practitioners, traditional healers, and the academia.
“That Africa as a continent is blessed with diverse plants and herbs that constitute a source of food and medicine is incontrovertible. The drugs of today’s modern society are products of research and development by major pharmaceutical companies, among the most important raw materials researched and developed are naturally occurring materials obtained especially from plants,” she stated.
She said many plants are similarly very poisonous and as the Agency that has been saddled with the mandate of safeguarding the health of the citizenry, NAFDAC will continue to make sure that only medicinal product including herbal remedies that have proven safety data will be approved for use by the public.
Adeyeye stated that the agency lists herbal medicines based on historical perspective on the use of the products after carrying out toxicological and microbiological evaluations in the laboratories to ensure that they are, at the minimum, safe and the listing status is valid for two years and it is renewable.
