The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said it would ensure that 60 per cent of the drugs being imported into the country were manufactured locally.
Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General of the agency, said this at a news conference, on Monday in Abuja.
She stressed the need for the agency to ensure the local pharmaceutical manufacturing sector thrived.
She said a significant amount of substandard and falsified drugs were creeping into the country.
“We want the local manufacturing sector to thrive; we want a situation whereby 60 per cent of the country’s products are manufactured locally,” Mrs Adeyeye said.
She said that a significant amount of substandard and falsified medicines were being imported “as unregistered or registered but with compromise on the content after approval to become substandard.”
“One of the drives of my administration is to encourage local manufacturing for products that can be manufactured in Nigeria,” the NAFDAC boss said.
She stated that the agency now encouraged innovation from local manufacturers by giving five-year market exclusivity to the innovator- company with the capacity to meet the country’s demand.
Mrs Adeyeye added that during the period, “there would be no approval of a similar product to ensure that products manufactured, imported, distributed and sold after registration or renewal of registration conformed with quality specifications”.
She said that the agency had four laboratories, with ISO-17025 accreditation across the country, to test the quality of medicines, vaccines test kits and other biological products.
Mrs Adeyeye said NAFDAC had overhauled its testing of products coming from China and India by re-certification of the ‘clean report’ and ‘analysis agents’ as well as laboratories from those countries.
This, she said, was aimed at ensuring that the imported products were tested by qualified laboratories.
The official said part of the restrictions was streamlining the pre-shipment testing, with testing done post-shipment. (NAN)
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