The Federal Government, yesterday, said it was introducing drug Coordinated Wholesale Centres, CWCs, to check the menace of fake and falsified medical products in the country, even as it warned that by December 31, 2018 all open drug markets will be permanently shut.
Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, disclosed these in Lagos during a stakeholders workshop organised by National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, WHO, on “The prevention, Detection and Response of Substandard and Falsified medical Products.”
He said the new measures were designed to allow drugs to be sourced directly from importers or manufacturers down to the end users, instead of buying drugs from open drug markets.
According to him, the Federal Ministry of Health had already developed National Drug Distribution Guidelines, NDDG, in 2012 to address the unsatisfactory chaotic drug distribution system in the country.
Speaking, Acting Director-General of NAFDAC, Mr. Ademola Mogbojuri, noted that the public health implications of substandard and falsified medical products were dire, which include treatment failure, high treatment cost, development of resistance, loss of confidence in the healthcare providers and healthcare system and may ultimately, result in fatality and death.
Mogbojuri who raised the alarm that the problem had become a serious threat to global public health said the fight against this nefarious act requires sustained action by both governmental and non governmental bodies.
Declaring the workshop open, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, who noted that the number of lives lost as a result of substandard medical product in the market was alarming, blamed the unacceptable situation to weakness of regulatory bodies charged with the responsibility of nipping the act in the bud.
