Abuja, Feb. 28, 2020 FLOWERBUDNEWS The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says it is committed to the coordinated wholesale centres for effective distribution of pharmaceuticals in the country.

Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director General of the agency, said this in a statement issued on Friday in Abuja.

She stated that the practice where licensed manufacturers and importers sold directly to unlicensed pharmaceutical wholesalers in open markets would not continue.

According to her, it does not support the current mitigation strategies against the diversion of controlled substances and illicit use of narcotics and psychotropic substances.

“We, therefore, remain committed to the coordinated wholesale centres being envisaged for the effective distribution of pharmaceuticals in the country,” she said.

Adeyeye said the agency would also strengthen its relationship with the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN) to ensure effective monitoring of substance control.

The agency said this would help in tracking of controlled substances in the distribution chain and to enforce compliance with the National Drug Distribution Guidelines.

According to her, NAFDAC will continue to build upon the synergy that exists between the agency and the PCN to ensure effective monitoring and tracking of controlled substances.

She said that the Minister of Health, Dr Osaigie Ehinare, approved the decentralisation of the warehousing of narcotic drugs to the six geopolitical zones for effectiveness.

Adeyeye said that the narcotic stores were domiciled in selected tertiary health institutions.

According to her, currently health facilities buy their narcotics from the nearest zonal narcotic store without coming to the Federal Central Medical Store in Oshodi-Lagos.

“In addition, the agency, on the platform of Response to Drugs and Related Organised Crime in Nigeria, is spearheading the review of inventory keeping tools in line with current realities.

“The tools have been revised and are currently being piloted on the platform the guidance of a Technical Working Group with stakeholders’ input.(NAN)

Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General, National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has called on the youth to develop entrepreneurial skills to reduce unemployment.

In a statement  on Saturday, Adeyeye made the call at the 4th Annual Lecture and Matriculation ceremony of Kings University, Ode-Omu, Osun State.

According to her, entrepreneurial skill is the driving tool of transformation for any meaningful development and has been piloted by the youth mostly in the developed countries of the world.

“The driving tool of this transformation has been the same young, educated and talented generation popularly known as ‘Millennial Entrepreneurs.

“However, challenges abound in the endeavor as many factors have been identified to be militating against Small and Medium Enterprises entrepreneurial development in Nigeria.

“These factors include: obtaining finance, monetary policy, lack of electricity supply, poor policy among others.

“This raises an issue regarding the need for an enabling environment and support system to promote SMEs in Nigeria, especially among the youth population,’’ she added.

She said that the government had put in place an initiative among which is the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), in line with the national policy on economy diversification.

She said that the policy was to remove bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria and make the country a progressively easier place to start and grow a business.

The DG mentioned other crowd funding for agricultural practice initiatives to enhance entrepreneurship.

According to her, the role of regulatory agencies with the advent of young entrepreneurs in all facets of industry and commerce is crucial to bringing innovations, product development and service deliveries especially in the evolving non-oil industries.

She said that the basic role of the regulatory agencies in all those was to facilitate the process and embracing the use of ICT in service delivery.

She said that the present generation had the opportunity to bring about growth in regulatory science where standards and new tools were needed for evaluation of the quality, safety and efficacy of medicines.

According to her, the goal is to determine the benefit-risk ratio in order to understand sound regulatory decisions that will protect the health of the population.

She added that the digitisation of the regulatory processes was another area where the present generation of youth could fit in very well due to the seamlessness that resulted from such implementation.

“A lot of innovations have taken place in food formulations and the packaging of local foods.

“NAFDAC identified the challenges of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in registration of their products and therefore instituted several activities which included further review of guidelines.

“The aim is to remove critical bottlenecks and bureaucratic red tapes that hinder the smooth registration and regulatory activities of MSMEs,’’ Adeyeye stated.

She gave some of the processes and procedures put in place to ease the MSMEs registration processes and services as sharing of facilities for production.

She explained that companies with similar products and limited resources could come together to use common facilities provided the products were similar.

Another was to streamline the agency’s requirements for product registration and this was restricted to a group of products.

The other was decentralised products registration thereby reducing the timeline to 60 days for MSMEs and 90/120 days for other companies.

She, therefore, called on the newly admitted students to concentrate much on their studies in order to be the driving subject the country was yearning for.

Kano, Feb. 28, 2020 (flowerbudnews) The National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration (NAFDAC) on Tuesday sealed two warehouses at Sabon Gari Market in Kano, for allegedly recycling expired drugs.

The Coordinator of NAFDAC in Kano State, Mr Shaba Muhammed, told newsmen after the operation that an intelligence report exposed the illegal activities at the warehouses.

Muhammed said that a surveillance team of the agency carried out an undercover investigation and confirmed the illegal activities at the warehouses.

He said that the sealed warehouses had been placed under security surveillance until investigations were concluded.

He said: “Its our mandate to safeguard the lives and health of people through what they consume, yet the public need to work with us by informing us of such acts.”

He appealed to the residents not to panic but report such cases to the agency. (NAN)

Adeyeye said in an interview with NAN in Abuja on Friday said there was need to encourage local manufacturing of drugs and loccally consumed foods to safeguard the health of the people.

“I have from the beginning of my assumption of duty in the agency, emphasized the need for  local manufacturing of drugs.

“As a country, we should take this seriously, we must strengthen our local manufacturers if we must achieve universal health coverage,” she said.

The NAFDAC DG said the agency was already building internal capacity to enable it play vital roles in the achievement of UHC.

“In NAFDAC, we are doing our part towards the realization of UHC, we are currently building our own internal capacity to fit into the UHC realization,” she said.

The Agency wishes to assure the public that it remains committed to safeguarding public health and executing its mandate by ensuring that regulated products – Food, Drug, Medical Devices, Cosmetics, Packaged water, Chemical and detergent meet set standards of Quality, Safety, Efficacy and Wholesomeness.

The Coronavirus pandemic as declared by the World Health Organization (WHO), calls for us all to be mindful and ensure that measures are in place to keep ourselves and others safe from the Coronavirus by doing little things to stay safe, e. g.

1. Washing of hands with soap as often as is possible
2. Use of hand sanitizers where there is no water for hand washing.
3. Avoid touching your face
4. Cough into tissue and dispose responsibly
5. Avoid shaking hands with or hugging people
6. Keep safe distance from people
7. As much as possible, Stay home.
8. ABOVE ALL FOLLOW THE PRESIDENTIAL TASK FORCE GUIDELINES

Being mindful of our regulatory obligations, we have put controls in place to ensure continued work process while also ensuring adequate protection of our staff and clients. Therefore the following would apply:

1. Expedited/emergency approvals for products necessary and critical to support our response to the pandemic.
2. There will be limited Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) inspections for local facilities at this time.
3. Currently, the conduct of GMP of foreign facilities cannot be undertaken due to the pandemic and the current travel restriction on international travels for public officers.
4. Applications for registration of products deemed to have urgent public health impact will be processed and given conditional and limited approvals.
5. All regulatory processes will continue and the Agency remains operational with restricted access in place and a request that stakeholders engage relevant directorates via email and other electronic platforms, which are functional.

The situation is fast evolving and we will continue to monitor and adjust our responses accordingly. For further information, please visit our website nafdac.gov.ng. Again we urge all to keep safe.

NAFDAC! SAFEGUARDING THE HEALTH OF THE NATION.”

Director General

Prof Moji Adeyeye, PhD, FAS

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says the widespread use of infant formula products will increase child morbidity and mortality in the country.

Mr Nantim Dadi, the Coordinator NAFDAC, Kaduna State Office, raised the alarm in Kaduna on Thursday at a two-day training for officials of the agency on marketing of infant and children food, and other designated products.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the training was organised by NAFDAC in collaboration with Save the Children International (SCI).

Dadi described the use of infant formula as “inappropriate” infant and young child feeding practice, which he said had continued to rise in spite of effort to discourage the practice among mothers.

He said that NAFDAC would partner with organisations willing to support the effort to eliminate the  practices that undermines optimal and appropriate feeding of children.

He noted the need for massive sensitisation campaign to educate mothers on the dangers inherent in the use of infant formula known as Breast Milk Substitute (BMS).

According to him, breastmilk remains the appropriate feeding practice for infant and young child because of its rich nutrients and minerals compared to any infant formula.

“But there is still high level of information gap on the existence of the International Code and National Regulations on Breastmilk Substitute among health workers.

“This ignorance has paved the way for infant formula companies within and outside the country to continue to violate the regulations while promoting their product.

“The BMS code and regulations among other things mandated the infant formula companies to acknowledge breastmilk supremacy in terms of nutrients and minerals needed by the child,”Dadi said.

He said the 2019 Marketing of Infant and Young Children Food and other Designated Products Regulation had been revised in the effort to address the challenge.

The official said that the training would equip NAFDAC officers with the needed skills on how to use the new monitoring tools to enforce compliance of the revised regulation.

“It has become necessary to build the capacity of our enforcement team following some amendments in the regulations and the monitoring tools.

“This will ensure integration of Breastmilk Substitutes monitoring and enforcement of the new regulations by all NAFDAC staff,” he said.

Mr Isah Ibrahim, Save the Children Nutrition Advocacy Advisor, described breastfeeding as the most cost-effective feeding that would improve the health and survival of children.

Ibrahim, however, noted that policies and interventions to support breastfeeding are undermined by the national and multi-national formula milk manufacturers who compete for a market share of infant feeding formula.

“The Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (BMS Code) including subsequent World Health Assembly resolutions and our national regulations are aimed at eliminating harmful marketing of breastmilk substitutes to the public and health professionals.

“But the monitoring, documentation, enforcement and reporting of code compliances or otherwise are still low,” Ibrahim said.

The nutrition advocacy advisor called for the timely review of the current monitoring tools to meet the global standard and new emerging issues.

This, according to him, should include exposure of inappropriate marketing of breastmilk substitutes through various social media platforms.

He urged NAFDAC to establish a platform for government agencies, NGOs, Civil Society Organisations and other key stakeholders to play their roles in promoting compliance of the code.

“They can meet on regular basis to share ideas and challenges toward achieving the desired objective of Breastmilk substitute regulations in Nigeria,” Ibrahim said. (NAN)

Abuja, March 24, 2020 (FLOWERBUDNEWS) The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says it has put up control measures for its operations to curb the spread of the Coronavirus.

The was contained in a statement by the Director-General of the agency, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to Adeyeye, the measures are aimed at ensuring adequate protection of staff and clients of the agency as a regulatory organisation.

She said that the agency had now moved to ensure emergency approvals for product necessary and critical to support response to the pandemic.

The DG noted that there would be limited Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) inspections for local facilities at this period.

She added that the conduct of GMP of foreign facilities cannot be undertaken due to the pandemic and the current travel restriction on international travel for public officers.

According to her, application for registration of products deemed to have urgent public health impact will be processed and given conditional approvals.

Adeyeye said that all regulatory processes would continue, adding that the agency remains operational with restricted access in place.

She said that stakeholders should engage relevant directorate via emails and other functional electronic platforms.

“The situation is fast evolving and we will continue to monitor and adjust our responses accordingly. For further information, visit our website: nafdac.gov.ng.

“The agency wishes to assure the public that it remains committed to safeguarding public health and executing its mandate by ensuring that regulated products meet set standards,” it said. (NAN)

Lagos, May 8, 2020 (NAN)  A non-governmental organisation, Movement for Fundamental Change, has called on the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to begin  investigations into local claims  for the treatment of novel coronavirus.

The Head of Policy Positions of the organisation, Chief Martin Onovo, made the call in a statement on Friday in Lagos.

According to Onovo, COVID-19 has been treated easily by some people across the world, using home remedies.

He said that Madagascar, Ghana and Senegal had all shown remarkable capacity to contain COVID-19 with local remedies.

Onovo said that Nigeria should list such claims if found useful.

“These claims include Pax Herbal’s CVD Plus, the Ooni of Ife’s remedies, Prof. Maurice Iwu’s product and  Ben Amodu’s drug.

“It is for NAFDAC to confirm the safety of the remedies and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control to test their effectiveness with volunteer COVID-19 patients,” he said.

Onovo said that successful products from Nigeria would establish another source of foreign exchange ‘in this period of low crude oil prices’.

Onovo urged the government to support Madagascar to obtain African and global acceptance for its COVID-19 remedy in line with the country’s foreign policy focus.

He said that Madagascar had not recorded any COVID-19-related death, adding that the mortality rate in Ghana was only 0.6 per cent because the people were  using local remedies to fight the virus.

Onovo said that COVID-19 was not death sentence and could easily be prevented and cured.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government has directed NAFDAC to begin the procedure for listing of a new herbal formulation to fight against novel coronavirus.

The directive  is contained in a circular entitled, “Formulation of A Phyto Medicine-Based Cough Mixture /Syrup For the Management of COVID-19 Patients”.

It was issued by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Abdulaziz Abdullahi.

It said that the formulation was the brainchild of the Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine Department. (NAN)