Relocating drug markets to wholesale centres, crucial to sanitising system — NAFDAC

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says relocating open drug markets to Coordinated Wholesale Centres (CWCs) is crucial to sanitising the system.

The Director-General of the agency, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, said this at a news conference while reacting to recent relocation of open drug markets in Mai Karami Plaza, Niger Street, Malam Kato and Sabon Gari areas of Kano to the CWC in Dangwauro area of the state.

She said same relocation would also apply to open drug markets in Lagos, Onitsha and Aba, stressing that the action is in line with the National Drug Distribution Guidelines (NDDG), a decision recommended by the Presidential Committee on Pharmaceutical Sector Reform (PCPSR).

She explained that the PCPSR was constituted in 2003 to develop strategies toward sanitising drug distribution system in the country and that gave birth to the CWCs.

The NAFDAC boss said that the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, was one of the architects of the CWCs and had the full support of the idea, where a clear mandate was given to NAFDAC and the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN) to ensure its full implementation.

Adeyeye said “the PCPSR recommended the development of National Drug Distribution Guidelines (NDDG) as key strategy to coordinate the drug distribution sub-sector and all operators in the open drug markets in Kano, Lagos, Onitsha and Aba were given December 2018 deadline by the then Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, to relocate to CWCs.

“The NDDG gives a clear mandate to the regulatory agencies, Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN), and NAFDAC to ensure its full implementation and compliance by concerned stakeholders.

“The CWCs in Kano was the first to be built as part of ensuring proper regulation of drug distribution and sale in Nigeria, and mitigation of Substandard and Falsified medicine (SF), as NAFDAC and PCN are the two regulatory agencies mandated to regulate the distribution and sale of drugs in the country.

“The two agencies have offices in the newly built CWCs in Kano. The mandate of NAFDAC is to control and regulate the importation, exportation, distribution, advertisement, sale and use of food, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, chemicals, packaged water and detergents.

“PCN is charged with regulating pharmacy practice sites (where some of NAFDAC’s regulated products are sold) and the practitioners, including the patent and proprietary medicine vendors that use the open drug markets to sell medicines,’’ she said.

Adeyeye said that over the years, medicine dealers in Kano had resisted attempts by concerned regulatory authorities to relocate their pharmaceutical businesses from the open drug markets in the areas concerned to the CWCs.

She added that some dealers even filed a suit in court seeking to reject the relocation of their businesses to the CWCs, citing the landmark judgment by Justice Simon Amobeda of the Kano Federal High Court that turned down their application in favour of the recommendation.

The director-general said the judgment by the Kano Federal High Court would bring a better control of drug distribution and ensure better regulation and prevalence of SFs would be mitigated significantly.

She said that since she assumed office in 2017, the drive to mitigate SFs was one of the eight pillars of her administration, and that the efforts led NAFDAC to the attainment of Maturity Level 3 of both NAFDAC and PCN.

The NAFDAC boss, therefore, called on medicine dealers to see their movement to the CWCs as a positive one for the survival of public health and efforts to continue the fight against SFs medicines.

According to her, removing SFs from circulation will make Nigerians healthier and improve the economy.