Nigeria currently has 15 percent fake drugs prevalence ― NAFDAC

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has disclosed that Nigeria currently has only 13 to 15 percent prevalence of fake drugs against the recent reports that the country has 70 percent of fake medicines.

The Agency therefore said, it has put in place necessary measures to curtail the fake and counterfeits medicines in circulation to sanitize Nigeria’s drug market

Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, speaking to journalists in Abuja, on the sideline interview of the commissioning of newly purchased staff vehicles, however stressed that claims that Nigeria has a high amount of fake drugs in circulation were not correct.

“Going by the ongoing efforts of staff, NAFDAC would soon get maturity level 4 status to enable Nigeria’s products trade and compete globally”.

“The agency was doing what she referred to as risk-based sampling of products that can be easily fake”.

According to Adeyeye: “There was some rumours from somewhere that 70 percent of our medicines are not good. That is a lie, that is not true. I will say about 15 percent, because we are doing what is called risk-based sampling of products that we know can be easily fake”

“The Agency was successfully tracking the location of COVID-19 vaccines across the country, and we will begin a similar thing with antimalaria, anti-HIV/AIDS and antituberculosis medicines to ascertain the quality and quantity of the drugs in circulation as the agency is at the verge of purchasing a device to assist tackle fake medicines”.

”As we speak, it is part of our maturity level consideration, we have to show that we have things in place to go after products that are fake. We are going to be mitigating it”.

“Our staff are working on uploading some tools on laptops. I am going to be using a device that costs about $57,000″

“We will have 40 of the devices. It’s like this cellphone. You place it on the table and it will show both the quality and the quantity. We are doing that on the side because that is what they want to see, that we are putting all these in place”.

“We are also doing track and trace, and it is highly technical. We are doing that to mitigate substandard falsified medicines but it is not something we do overnight.

“We started with COVID-19 vaccines. For the COVID-19, we know where every vaccine is in the country because of the track and trace technology”.

“We are going to start doing that over antimalaria, antituberculosis, and anti-HIV/AIDS. That is coming through global fund support. So we are expanding it, we are already engaging our local manufacturers to put that barcoding track and trace in place so that we can monitor their own products from the manufacturer to the pharmacist that would dispense in the hospital or the practice setting, drug store and others.”

Asked on when the agency would attain maturity level 4,she said; I don’t want to give timeline, unless to my staff. “

On attaining WHO Maturity Level Four, Adeyeye disclosed that prior to the announcement of attaining Maturity Level three on Wednesday, the Agency has started working on Maturity Level Four and it would take nothing less than a year because many things have to be put in place.