More Security For NAFDAC Operatives

Just lately, the Director Normal of the Nationwide Company for Meals and Medication Administration Management (NAFDAC), Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, raised the alarm over alleged threats to her life by folks suspected to be cartels within the pretend drug enterprise. The DG additionally known as for elevated safety for herself and her employees, who’ve confronted numerous threats together with kidnappings and bodily assaults.

The loss of life menace might not be unconnected to the company’s current alarming discovery and seizure of fifty truckloads of counterfeit medicine from a market in Onitsha, Anambra State.

The invention was made amid the company’s ongoing crackdown on pretend and substandard medicine.

Equally, final month, NAFDAC confiscated 87 truckloads of banned, expired, and substandard medicinal merchandise, together with USAID and UNFPA donated antiretroviral medicine, female and male condoms, and different compromised medical provides.

The company’s raid of the nation’s three main open drug markets: Ariaria and Eziukwu Markets in Aba, Abia State, Idumota Drug Market in Lagos and the Bridge Head Market in Onitsha, Anambra State led to the invention of N1 trillion of pretend and expired medicine together with, diverted and expired USAID and UNFPA medical provides, antiretroviral medicine, and condoms meant to assist Nigeria’s HIV/AIDS response. These merchandise have been both improperly saved or resold for revenue, compromising, within the course of, the worldwide battle towards HIV/AIDS.

Extra alarming was the invention of medication requiring chilly chain storage however have been discovered stacked in bathrooms, beneath staircases, and on rooftops at excessive temperatures, inflicting them to degrade into much less efficient and poisonous substances.

Regardless of authorities’s efforts, the menace of pretend medicine in Nigeria continues to rise. Reportedly, massive variety of Nigerians die yearly whereas the pattern continues unabated.

Faux medicine or substandard medical merchandise, are counterfeit drugs both produced at under customary high quality or offered to folks as genuine and efficient pharmaceutical manufacturers.  The risks of pretend/ counterfeit medicine can’t be overemphasised.

These medicine which were maginalised to fulfill some pecuniary curiosity pose a major menace to public well being and safety. In impact, there are abounding circumstances of remedy failures, drug resistance, and the ensuing undermining of public belief in healthcare methods, doubtlessly resulting in illness outbreaks and, typically, avoidable fatalities.

In accordance with a current examine by the United Nations’ Workplace on Medication and Crime, as much as 500,000 folks die yearly from counterfeit medicine in sub-Saharan Africa. The identical report reveals that as many as 267,000 deaths annually from substandard malaria medicine and as much as 169,000 deaths annually from pretend antibiotics used to deal with pneumonia in kids. Between $12 million and $44.7 million is spent annually treating individuals who have used counterfeit or substandard malaria medicine.

We recall that Prof Dora Akunyili, a former NAFDAC chief, confronted related threats from drug cartels and corrupt people who benefited from the counterfeit drug commerce. In 2003, Akunyili narrowly escaped assassination when gunmen fired bullets at her convoy on her approach to Anambra State in South east Nigeria. Regardless of a number of assassination makes an attempt, she remained resolute in her mission, demonstrating immense bravery and integrity.

The dangers confronted by NAFDAC officers in combating counterfeit medicine require pressing and elevated consideration from safety businesses. The urgency the scenario calls for is, in our view, immeasurable if the company and its employees can be protected and supported within the dangers they absorb service of the nation.

Adeyeye, in her attraction for enhanced safety cowl, claims that she has solely two police escorts each in Abuja and Lagos. For anyone holding such a delicate place coupled with the truth that drug cartels are identified for his or her brutal act of violence, the federal government mustn’t dismiss the alleged menace to life or deal with it with levity. We urge the authorities to direct an instantaneous deployment of extra safety personnel across the NAFDAC DG and her employees.

The company beneath Adeyeye must be recommended for the breakthroughs it has recorded within the battle towards pretend medicine and their distributors throughout the nation however extra must be completed on the facet of presidency to guard the lives of these on the forefront of the battle.

In view of the dangerous results of pretend drugs on lives of harmless Nigerians, the Nigerian authorities via the Nationwide Meeting, ought to urgently take into account the proposal by the director common of the company, Prof. Adeyeye, for loss of life penalty for offenders.

This challenge of pretend medicine is a matter of nationwide safety which shouldn’t be taken as a right. It’s on this observe that this newspaper is looking for collaboration amongst authorities businesses to curb the sale of pretend medicine/ medical merchandise. We’re additionally of the view that NAFDAC and different regulatory businesses saddled with the accountability of curbing the menace of counterfeit medicine in addition to substandard merchandise ought to enhance their intelligence gathering community and institute a daily naming and shaming of those retailers of loss of life.