The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) have expressed serious concerns about the abuses in the nation’s drug markets and expressed their determination to curb such abuses in order to guarantee healthy living for consumers.
NAFDAC Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye and the Registrar of the PCN, Ibrahim Babashehu-Ahmed, made this pledge on Tuesday, at a joint media briefing in Lagos, pointing out that the relocation of the open drugs market in Kano to a Coordinated Wholesale Centre (CWC) has set a standard that should be followed by others.
Adeyeye lamented over she termed the “chaotic drug distribution system in Nigeria and open drug markets” and described the ugly situation as a sore point to drug regulatory agencies, especially to her agency.
She pointed out that the disorderly chain of movement of manufactured drugs from the manufacturers to the final consumers had been inimical to the efficacy of pharmaceutical products and is the primary cause of substandard and falsified medicines being in circulation.
According to her, the consequence of this is treatment failure or even death.
Adeyeye maintained that to make Nigerians healthier and reduce mortality, NAFDAC and the PCN must continue to jointly fight against the chaotic distribution menace nationwide.
She recalled that the fight to sanitize the drug distribution system in the country was kicked off over a decade ago when the Presidential Committee on Pharmaceutical Sector Reform (PCPSR), constituted in 2003, developed strategies toward the sanitization of drug distribution.
Specifically, she said: “The PCPSR recommended the development of National Drug Distribution Guidelines (NDDG) as a key strategy to coordinate the drug distribution sub-sector and all operators in the open drug markets in Kano, Lagos, Onitsha, and Aba.”
Adeyeye pointed out that open drug markets in these states were initially given a December 2018 deadline by the then Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, to relocate to the Coordinated Wholesale Centres (CWCs), which were designed as controlled environments for proper monitoring of drug distribution, are an outcome of the Presidential Committee on Pharmaceutical Sector Reform (PCPSR).
In addition, the drug administration expert clarified that the National Drug Distribution Guidelines (NDDG) provided a clear mandate to NAFDAC and PCN to ensure full compliance and implementation by all relevant stakeholders’ adding that to achieve the mandate, the two agencies would continue to intensify efforts to ensure the establishment of CWC in other states.
In his remarks during the media chat, the Registrar of the PCN, Ibrahim Babashehu-Ahmed, explained that the CWC in Kano was the first of its kind that was established to enhance the regulation of drug distribution and sales in Nigeria.
The industry expert explained that the PCN was charged with the responsibility of regulating pharmacy practice sites, the practitioners, and the patent and proprietary medicine vendors that use the open drug markets to sell medicines.
Babashehu-Ahmed explained that all efforts to relocate the open drugs market in Kano were resisted, noting that the dealers filed a lawsuit in a bid to stop their relocation.
The Pharmacist recalled that a landmark judgment by Justice Simon Amobeda of the Kano Federal High Court on February 16, 2024, which mandated the relocation of open drug marketers in Kano to the Coordinated Wholesale Centre (CWC), represented a major step towards improving drug distribution control and curbing the prevalence of substandard medicines in the country.
