NIGERIA – Major players in the nation’s pharmaceutical industry have pledged to collaborate with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on local vaccine production.
The players are under the aegis of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group- Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN).
They aim at attaining the World Health Organisation (WHO) Maturity Level 4 status and launch Nigeria into the league of vaccines and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) producers in the world.
The manufacturers, led by the Chairman of PMG-MAN, Dr. Fidelis Ayebae, commended the Agency on the achievement of WHO Maturity Level 3, stressing that the group would do everything humanly possible to support NAFDAC to continue to excel in creating an enabling environment for the industry to thrive.
“Let me assure you, that if there is one body in foods and drugs and other related chemicals which are under your purview, that want you to succeed more than anything else, that you can call success, it is PMG-MAN,” he said.
Dr Ayebae, who is also the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, of Fidson Healthcare Plc, vowed to galvanise other chief executive officers of pharmaceutical companies in the country to ensure that they have a collaborative relationship with the regulatory body to make its oversight responsibility over the industry most effective and help the industry to grow.
He added that his body would form a technical committee with NAFDAC that would work with the Agency to ensure that the industry attains greater heights.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, at a hybrid stakeholders meeting organised by the Agency in Lagos recently on pharmaceutical traceability, disclosed that the nation had to maintain the Maturity Level 3 attained last year by continuing to adhere strictly to the Best Global Practices in regulatory responsibility.
‘’We are going to strengthen our operations and be more effective. We are going to get ML4. We are going to get marked for World Listed Authority apart from ML4,” she said.
NAFDAC declares emergency on skin bleaching
NAFDAC has declared the use of bleaching creams as a serious national health emergency in the country.
The development is coming after Nigeria was ranked number one in the use of bleaching creams in Africa.
Speaking at the flag-off of a media sensitization workshop on the dangers of bleaching creams organised by the Association of Nigerian Health Journalists, the Director General of NAFDAC, Mojisola Adeyeye, revealed that Nigeria ranks first in Africa among the countries that use bleaching creams.
She noted that 77 per cent of Nigerian women use bleaching creams.
“The World Health Organisation study in 2018 revealed that the use of skin bleaching cream is prevalent amongst 77 per cent of Nigerian women, which is the highest in Africa compared to 59 per cent in Togo, 35 per cent in South Africa and 27 per cent in Senegal,” she said.
“These scary statistics have shown that the menace of bleaching creams in Nigeria has become a national health emergency that requires a multi-faceted regulatory approach.”
Adeyeye added that the Federal Government is working assiduously to implement stringent measures against the menace.
According to the NAFDAC boss, sensitization workshops in the six geo-political zones were part of the measures being taken to discourage the use of bleaching creams.
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