As part of the multi-dimensional approach towards fighting drug counterfeiting, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has decided to deploy some regulatory officers to man the new Mega Drug Distribution Centers built in some parts of the country.
Director General of NAFDAC, Dr Paul Orhii dropped the hint at the International Conference on Drug Counterfeiting organized by USA Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington DC.
A statement signed by the deputy director (Public Relations and Protocol), Abubakar Jimoh made available to LEADERSHIP, noted that the NAFDAC DG who was widely applauded for his ground breaking innovative anti-counterfeiting strategies by participants at the conference, said officers posted to the mega centers will be provided with the hand held drug testing device known as TRUSCAN in order to track down drug counterfeiters.
According to Jimoh, Orhii lamented that over 270 million people in Africa lack access to safe and good quality medicines just as drug counterfeiters have targeted developing countries because of their weak regulatory system and porous borders.
According to him, the Nigerian Open Drug Market will be dismantled once sufficient Mega Drug Distribution Centers are built nationwide.
The Director General observed that distribution of free drugs particularly anti-malarias by international donor agencies will pose serious public health challenge to developing countries in the near future because of current damage to production capacity of local drug manufacturing companies inflicted by freely donated drugs.
His words “What happens when the donor agencies eventually pull out?. Free drugs could reduce drug counterfeiting temporarily, but in the long run it will kill incentive of local drug manufacturers”.
In her opening remarks, the CFR Senior Fellow for Global Health, Dr Laurie Garrett pointed out that drug counterfeiting is growing worse because of globalization but regretted that there is no sufficient data on how worse the problem is.
Dr Garrett explained that shortage of Life Saving Medicines and companies using cheap and low active pharmaceutical ingredients because of profit have compounded drug counterfeiting problem.