By Hassan Zaggi
The Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, has disclosed that the agency has concluded plans to create an office that is dedicated to take care of women’s health.
This is even as she revealed that in an effort to deliver on its mandate, the agency will increase its staff strength by 100 per cent in the next few years.
Speaking at a maiden media briefing to unveil the agenda for her second term of five years, she said that new office for women’s health will be saddled with the responsibility of understudying drug, cosmetics, and food products that affect women, the unborn and the child.
The new office, according to her, will “emphasize misuse or abuse of drug among women and impact on the child and more focus on maternal and child mortality and morbidity rate.”
Speaking on other new initiatives, Prof. Adeyeye said that Supply Chain Monitoring will be given renewed attention.
According to her, there will be continual sanitization of the Supply Chain Units to mitigate counterfeits and substandard foods.
The agency will also, “scale up Track and Trace of Imported and locally manufactured pharmaceuticals; establish Structured and Active Tracking and Tracing through Solution Providers and initiate Track and Trace of Foods.”
She further noted that there will be continual vigilance to reduce substandard foods, counterfeit medicines, and narcotics.
The next few days, she revealed, will witness enhanced Local Manufacturing (including Vaccines) Quality and Trade; training on Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) Regulation; develop NAFDAC-Industry API Manufacturing Regulation and enhance Research and Development Training Platforms with the pharmaceutical industry.
In an effort to expand Post Marketing Surveillance (PMS), she said, the agency will recruit more staff and provide more tools; provide capacity building and make enforcement nimbler for sustained response.
While lamenting that the agency is grossly understaffed, Prof. Adeyeye revealed that one of her plans is to increase the staff strength by 100 per cent in the next few years.
“We need staff. In one of our states, we have only 12 staff and they are expected to do a lot of things in the state. They are supposed to do surveillance, inspection, follow up, registration and many others.
“So, part of what I want to achieve is to increase our staff capacity by 100 percent. We are currently about 2000 now, but by the end of year 2024, 2025 or thereabout, we would have reached 4000. Because that is part of our post marketing surveillance. We are going to improve on that with the little that we have but we are praying that the government will bail us out with funding.”
Responding to a question on the proliferation of sachet and bottle water manufacturers, she said: “Water kills so fast compared to food because it absorbed so fast, especially in children. Their body is so small, whatever enters their body can damage quickly. I am very interested in the quality of water our people drink. We are going to intensify efforts on that and partner with the media to ensure we get the needed sensitization done.”
She further revealed that her second term will witness continuous strengthening of regulatory activities through creative engagement of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
She noted that there will more proactive interaction with different sectors of MSMEs at the state level; better engagement on exportation of regulated products; establish evidenced-based facilitation of export of quality NAFDAC regulated products and expand the role of the NAFDAC Office of Trade and International Relations.
Prof. Adeyeye also disclosed that infrastructural development will receive attention in her second term.
According to her, the agency will build a new befitting headquarters in Abuja and continuation of nation-wide improvement of working environment including having additional laboratories, zonal and state office infrastructures.
She noted that there will continuation of improvement in ICT functions of the agency through enhance digitalization of more regulatory processes for better management and transparency and also improve the website for better navigation.
