The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has destroyed 135 truckloads of counterfeit and damaged/expired products willingly submitted by stakeholders, worth about N16 billion.
The Director General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, disclosed this yesterday at a parley with journalists in Abuja.
She said the investigation and enforcement directorate of the agency also carried out several raids in the South East and South South across nine states, adding that counterfeit Diageo products worth over N38 million were recovered.
She said, “In Lagos State and Abuja, several places were also raided, and counterfeited products worth over N200 million were recovered and seized.”
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The NAFDAC DG said the Veterinary Medicines and Allied Products Directorate of the agency recently commenced the ban and phase-out action plan of some pesticide active ingredients.
She said the pesticides to be banned are Paraquat, Chlorpyrifos, and Atrazine.
She said there was also a phase-out of 12 active ingredients: carbofuran, clothianidin, diquat dibromide, diquate dichloride, ametryn, anthraquinone, carbendazim, chlorothalonil, oxadiargyle, thiacloprid, methomyl, and thiamethoxam.
Prof. Adeyeye said four others were reclassified. They are fipronil, permethrin, cyfluthrin, and amitraz.
She added that the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Unit has commenced the digitization of a structured database of NAFDAC-approved human medicines from 2018 to date with comprehensive Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification based on the World Health Organization (WHO) ATC.
She said some milestones of the agency this year were the approval of three vaccines R21 Malaria Vaccine (Full Dossier Approval), MPox and Human Papilloma Virus (HPV Vaccines), and WHO pre-qualification of the drug lab in Yaba, Lagos State.