Director General of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr Paul Orhii, has expressed satisfaction with the on-going collaboration between the agency and the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN).
He stated that the move was beginning to produce the desired effect.
Dr. Orhii made the assertion while delivering his goodwill message at the 33rd annual national conference of the ACPN, held in Ilorin, Kwara State, recently.
The NAFDAC DG, who was represented by the agency’s coordinator for Kwara State, Mrs Juliana Bolaji Abayomi, expressed satisfaction with the theme of the conference, “Evolving Best Practice in Community Pharmacy,” saying it recognised the importance of the mainstreaming excellence in service delivery in all spheres of national life, especially in the health sector.
He further disclosed that NAFDAC had adopted a multi-layered approach in the fight against substandard, spurious, falsely-labelled, falsified and counterfeit medical products.
“The multi-layered intervention includes, but not limited to, massive awareness campaign, stakeholders collaboration and deployment of cutting-edge technologies,” he said, adding that “I am happy that the collaboration towards drugs quality monitoring between NAFDAC and ACPN is being strengthened and beginning to yield desired results, in terms of much needed support and cooperation.”
Orhii also noted that the key feature of the agency’s action plan in widening access of Nigerians to good quality medicines and wholesome foods is strengthened by the use of the Mobile Authentication Service (MAS) and other anti-counterfeiting mechanisms, while assuring that the challenges associated with MAS were already being discussed by all stakeholders.
“It is our collective responsibility, as professionals in the expert handling of medicines, to continuously monitor the quality of medicines in the market place, to minimise morbidity and mortality. This will also improve public confidence in our supply chain system,” he said.
