The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control said that more than 50 per cent of certificates of pharmaceutical products that are imported into Nigeria are fake.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, disclosed this at the stakeholders’ engagement meeting with regulators, policymakers, and law enforcement agencies today in Abuja.
The certificate of a pharmaceutical product is issued in the format recommended by the World Health Organisation, and it establishes the status of the pharmaceutical product and the applicant for the certificate in the exporting country. It is for a single product only since manufacturing arrangements and approved information for different dosage forms and different strengths can vary.
Adeyeye said the goal of the engagement meeting with the stakeholders is to ensure that medical products in circulation are of the right quality, safe, and efficacious.
She said that substandard and falsified products threaten access to safe efficacious and affordable medicines, and undermine the achievement of universal health coverage in Nigeria, and Africa.
The NAFDAC boss lamented that the relatively high prevalence of substandard and falsified medicines in Africa is a major threat to public health.
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