The Director-General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Professor Mojisola Christiana Adeyeye, has described substandard and falsified medicines as global problem presenting enormous public health challenges to regulatory authorities in developed and developing countries.
The D-G made this known during a press briefing on Monday at the NAFDAC headquarters, Abuja, assuring that the strategic plan of the agency was to reduce substandard and falsified medicines to more than 5 per cent prevalence in Nigeria by 2025.
She said, global prevalence of substandard and falsified medicines is about 10 per cent. She explained that “The last data we have on prevalence of SFs in Nigeria is 16.7 per cent, that was about 14 years ago.”
The NAFDAC boss stated that the public health implications of SFs include “increase in hospital admissions, prolonged stay in the hospitals, development of resistance drug and treatment failures and death.”
“The agency has destroyed substandard and falsified medical products worth more than N3, 226, 681,737.00.
She noted that the street value of substandard and falsified medical products seized was N684 million.
She said, NAFDAC has been highly proactive and vigilant towards curbing SFs in the country, in all efforts to safeguard the health of the Nigerian populace.
According to her, the regulatory control will also build confidence in Nigerians about the medicines that are available in the country since SFs medicines can come in through importation.
