By Asma’u Ahmad
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Mrs Binta Bello, on Tuesday urged stronger collaboration between health and other sectors of the economy for quality healthcare services and products in the country.
Mrs. Bello made the appeal at the inauguration of Agilent HPLC Laboratory Instrument at the Central Drug Control Laboratory, National Agency for Foods and Drug and Administration Control (NAFDAC), Yaba, Lagos.
She said that further collaboration would help to reposition the health sector in areas of infrastructure support, capacity building and delivery of quality health services.
Prof. Isaac Adewole
The permanent secretary said that HPLC Laboratory would help to tackle effectively the scourge of fake, counterfeit and substandard medicine that had been a challenge to pharmaceutical industries.
According to her, millions of naira and thousands of lives have been lost because of the scourge. “The problem of fake drug proliferation in Nigeria has affected the credibility of the healthcare system and has exerted very harmful effects on the consumer resulting to illness, disability and even death.
“Some of the incidences have resulted in death even among children because most times the consumers do not know the quality of what they are buying or taking. “It is encouraging to note the various unrelenting approaches, including cutting edge technologies employed by NAFDAC in tackling this menace and bringing it under control.
“Some of the several cutting edge technologies deployed over the years by NAFDAC to combat the counterfeit challenge include Truscan Device, GPHF-Minilab, and Mobile Authentication Service. “These technologies are highly capital intensive and the innovative technologies are only complimentary to the laboratory analysis, which enables NAFDAC to pronounce on the quality of medicines,” she said.
She applauded the Bank of Industry (BOI) for supporting NAFDAC and stepping in to provide a world class Aligent HPLC machine
Also, the Acting Director-General, NAFDAC, Mrs Yetunde Oni, said that the goal of the agency is to achieve zero telorance to counterfeiting of NAFDAC regulated products and to safeguard the health of the nation. “We are determined and committed to ensuring that only the right quality foods, drugs and other regulated products are manufactured exported, imported, advertised, sold and used in Nigeria.
“We are also committed to ensuring quality and timing releases of laboratory reports, hence our quest for top-notch laboratories with adequate equipment and well trained staff to perform optimally at all times,” she said.
Acting Managing Director of the Bank of Industry (BoI), Mr Waheed Olagunju, said the essence of the donated machine was to ensure that product registration time for manufacturers was reduced and efficiency increased.
He said that the machine would improve the turnaround time for product samples to 200 samples per day as against the previous five samples per day done by the agency.
According to him, NAFDAC certification will hasten the process for accessing credit facility by manufacturing companies in need of funds from BoI. Mr Olagunju said that fast-tracked certification would facilitate economic growth by ensuring that Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) conformed to best production standards.
