NAFDAC boss recommends capital punishment for fake drug manufacturers, dealers

The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control,NAFDAC, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye  on Tuesday recommended capital punishment for fake drugs manufacturers and dealers in the country.

According to the NAFDAC boss,  this will serve as deterrent to those she labeled “merchants of death” and put an end to the unwholesome production and marketing of fake drugs.

Professor Adeyeye who.featured in a special interview programme on the Television and Radio Channels of the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, BCOS  and monitored by Mega Icon magazine  disclosed “NAFDAC is working on more intense punishment on fake and hard drugs.The existing penalty for drug pedlling is not stiff enough.  I’m not against capital punishment for drug peddlers. Some hardened drug peddlers deserve capital punishment.

“We will not hesitate to close all the lines of companies falsifying drugs.The war on fake drugs is a marathon.It is all over the world.”

The NAFDAC Director-General while speaking on the prevalence rate of fake drugs in the country explained that “the prevalence rate of falsified products is about 10 per cent,meaning one in every 10 drugs being manufactured in Nigeria is fake.This figure is less worldwide.”

While x-raying the activities of the regulatory agency,she disclosed that in 2019,NAFDAC intercepted and destroyed fake drugs worth one point three trillion Naira adding that the Inspection and Enforcement Directorate of the agency is being strengthened to curb the activities of fake drug manufacturers and dealers.

On NAFDAC’s intervention in the global search for solution to the coronavirus pandemic,Professor Adeyeye said as a vibrant member of the global community,Nigeria is also in the race for global cure for COVID-19.

She said “clinical trial treatment is going on in different parts of the country. NAFDAC reviews protocol to ensure subjectand patient is protected.”

“For instance,the clinical trials going on in Lagos involves Chlo to qui me and other therapeautics.”

She added that about 90 countries are currently working on vaccine research and production but regretted that Nigeria which had been in the forefront of vaccine production for 50 years was not presently in the race.

The Professor of Pharmaceutics kicked against the use of foreign herbal medicine to cure the ravaging coronavirus in Nigeria,saying”we should search for our own local medicine which may have same effectiveness.

She however said the agency was still waiting for samples of Madagascar COVID Organics which will go through safety studies and possibly clinical trial to ascertain its safety for use by patients.

Professor Adeyeye while commenting on the possible benefits of chloroquine and remdesivir in the treatment of COVID-19 said remdesivir is not yet commercially available and very expensive while the use of chloroquine is limited to clinical trial setting and not should be used unless prescribed by a physician.