NAFDAC Commences Digitisation Of Approved Medicines

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, said the agency has commenced the digitization of approved human medicines to afford the general public the needed information on registered drugs.

This is as the agency sait it destroyed 135 truckloads of fake, counterfeit, and damaged or expired products willingly submitted by stakeholders at an estimated street value of N16 billion.

The Director General NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, who disclosed these in Abuja on Monday, said the agency had since begun a phased ban of pesticides in the country.

The agency said it also carried out several raids in the South-East and South-South across nine states and counterfeit Diageo products worth over N38 million were recovered.

In Lagos State and Abuja, several places were also raided, and counterfeited products worth over N200 million were recovered and seized.

NAFDAC said its Veterinary Medicines and Allied Products Directorate had recently commenced the ban and phase-out action plan for some pesticide-active ingredients.

Speaking during her 2023 End of Year Parley in Abuja, Prof Adeyeye isted the pesticides that are on the ban as Paraqua; Chlorpyrifos, Atrazine and 12 active ingredients: Carbofuran, Clothianidin, Diquat Dibromide, Diquate Dichloride, Ametryn, Anthraquinone, Carbendazim, Chlorothalonil, Oxadiargyle, Thiacloprid, Methomyl and Thiamethoxam.

The phase-out commencement, she said, commences in January 1, 2024 with the ban of of Paraquat, followed by Chlorpyrifos on 1st November 2024 and Atrazine on 1st January 2025.

She said NAFDAC would reclassify four others, which it named Fipronil, Permethrin, Cyfluthrin and Amitraz.

“The ICT Unit has commenced the digitization of a structured database of NAFDAC approved human medicines from 2018 to date with comprehensive Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) Classification based on WHO ATC. The registered drug product database system is available both on the web and on mobile app.

“This would place the needed information on drugs registered by the agency at the fingertips of the public.

“Investigation and Enforcement Directorate has been busy with joint inspection/seizures and destruction exercise of banned or unregistered products,”she said.

She said NAFDAC had since rolled out its roadmap for the attainment of Maturity Level 4 by next year, following a successful World Health Organizations, WHO Audit team visit.

“The GBT WHO Audit team visited NAFDAC to monitor three regulatory processes under Regulatory Inspection, Market Authorization and Laboratory Testing. We have thus achieved a successful WHO GMP inspection observed audit and have since rolled out our roadmap for the attainment of ML4 by next year,” she said.

Speaking on the understudying/learning visit on NAFDAC traceability by Botswana and Uganda,Prof. Adeyeye said:”NAFDAC has made herself available to capacity building of other sister agencies in Africa for one regulatory function or the other.

“Botswana and Uganda came to understudy NAFDAC on traceability.

“This is also called Reliance. NAFDAC herself is developing relationships with other regulatory agencies for information sharing and capacity building. Examples of such agencies include US FDA; UK VET; TGA; MHRA, South Korea NRA; Saudi Arabia FDA; South Africa SAHPRA; Egypt EDA,” she said.