The Acting Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mrs. Yetunde Oni, on Friday said the agency would encourage local production of narcotics to meet the need of the nation’s health sector.
Narcotics are used as a painkiller during minor and major surgeries by physicians.
Mrs Oni said that it has been identified that narcotics could be manufactured in Nigeria under close monitoring, adding that works are being done in that direction.
The Acting – Director made this known to journalists in Ijebu – Ode, Ogun State, at the end of the agency’s Management Retreat with the theme: “Repositioning NAFDAC for Efficient Management and Resource Control for Greater Performance.”
“NAFDAC does not produce, we encourage companies that can produce. We have identified that Nigeria can manufacture narcotics locally. It is work in progress. We hope in the next few months we will get there.
“Narcotics is a controlled drugs and we cannot afford to go into large scale manufacturing. It has to be controlled. A certain quantity has to be given to us and we have to give account of how we have used it. It requires a lot of monitoring and surveillance,” she said.
She also said that the agency needs more laboratories for greater performance amid its increasing volume of task.
According to her, the existing seven laboratories are not enough for testing products’ samples for registration, product complain samples, enforcement samples and samples that have violated NAFDAC laws.
“Right now we have seven labs in the whole of Nigeria, just seven labs carrying out all these functions, we are taking samples for registration, we are taking complain samples, taking enforcement samples, we are taking samples that have violated our laws into just these seven labs, covering all the seven classes of products to regulate so we cannot agree less that we need more labs,” she said.
The Acting Director – General revealed the agency is contemplating building a laboratory in Ogun state because of the increasing number of industries coming to the state to do business.
She said such laboratory if established would help the agency monitor the quality of products being manufactured in the state, and however, added that the recent burnt laboratory of the agency in Oshodi – Lagos, did not set them back because it quickly got back-ups and supplies from six other laboratories in other parts of the country.
“Ogun State is coming up, some of the companies in Lagos have relocated to Ogun State, and to ease the work of NAFDAC, it will not be out of place to have a standalone office in Ogun State and also a lab complement our efforts of ensuring that right quality products are manufactured in Ogun State and reduce the load on the Lagos lab.
“And for me and I want to reiterate this, NAFDAC should have office in all the States of the federation and we are growing bigger, volume of activities are increasing, if we have a stand alone office in every of the States, nothing stops us from having a stand-alone lab to serve the need of that particular state in terms of products that are regulated by NAFDAC, that we will become more efficient and effective.
“Our productivity will soar higher and higher, however it is capital intensive to come up with such a lab, it is futuristic, we are talking about 10, 15, 20 years from now,” she said.
