BoI, NAFDAC move to position drug makers for global market play

The Bank of Industry (BoI) and the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) are making conscious efforts to place Nigerian pharmaceuticals in the global eye.

But both institutions are banking on increasing their fight against counterfeiting to safeguard the health of Nigerians and raise the confidence of local and global consumers.

In line with this, the BoI has supported NAFDAC in the acquisition of Agilent High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) instrument that would help in product analysis in the laboratory, signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to help achieve zero tolerance to counterfeiting of products in the country.

Waheed Olagunju, acting managing director, BoI, said the partnership between BoI and NAFDAC would support many manufacturers to meet not only the NAFDAC standards but also the World Health Organisation (WHO) requirements enabling manufactures to bid or tender to participate in global tenders for supply of drugs by the international agencies.

As part of the MOU, NAFDAC would allow BoI to access its database to know Nigerian companies across the country that were accredited by NAFDAC so as to feel comfortable dealing with them, Olagunju said.

“For this country’s economic recovery to fast-track, both agencies must work hand in hand to support small and medium enterprises that are accredited by NAFDAC to access credit so as to model their businesses in the open market,” The BoI chief said.

Four drug makers, including Evans Medical, Swiss Pharma, Chi Pharma and May& Baker, have already acquired the WHO prequalification needed for international market play. Already 15 companies are gunning for the certification in an industry whose capacity utilisation is less than 30 per cent.

Yetunde Oni, acting director-general of NAFDAC, said the instrument procured with the support of BoI would avail its laboratory analysts the opportunity to work with user-friendly, high output, sensitive facility with multiple detectors that could handle various product types, thus improving timelines of analysis of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, veterinary and other regulated products.

Binta Bello, permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, said collaboration, partnership and cooperation were the key tools in effective delivery of mandates on public health.

Bello said effective collaboration would help to tackle the scourge of fake, counterfeit and sub-standard medicines that had been a great challenge to the pharmaceutical industry and the general populace as millions of naira and thousands of life had been lost to the situation.

Consequently, use of HPLC and other very sensitive analytical techniques would be a great tool in effective identifying counterfeit pharmaceutical and combating counterfeiting, Bello said.

 

ODINAKA ANUDU & ANTHONIA OBOKOH