THE National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has declared that 89.64 per cent of drugs in the Nigerian markets are genuine, just as six Nigerian pharmaceutical companies are set to obtain the World Health Organisation’s (WHO)-prequalification in two years.

Director General of NAFDAC, Dr. Paul Orhii, said yesterday at a press conference in Lagos on the survey of fake medicines in the Nigerian pharmaceutical market that of the 2,770 medicines tested by the agency, 2,483 (that is 89.64 per cent) were genuine while only 10.36 per cent were fake.

Orhii explained: “The national anti-counterfeiting survey using the Truscan device to reduce the incidence of fake medicines in Nigerian pharmaceutical market commenced in January 2010 and so far, 29 states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), have been visited for the exercise. Five thousand, nine-hundred and seventy samples of medicines have been tested using Truscan so far and the exercise is continuing. Not all samples have been tested in the laboratory.

“In the survey, out of the 5,970 sampled so far, 2,770 have had their Truscan results compared with confirmatory results, which is our benchmark for computation.

“Of this 2,770 medicine samples, 2,556 (92.25 per cent) had the same result with the confirmatory test, while 214 (7.75 per cent) had differing results with the laboratory. Two thousand, four-hundred and eighty three (89.64 per cent) passed the confirmatory laboratory test while 287 representing 10.36 failed”.

Contrary to a recent independent study by scientists at the University of Lagos, which showed that 84.7 per cent of popular anti-malarial drugs in Lagos State are fake, the NAFDAC survey showed: “Of the 910 anti-malarial samples tested, 732 representing 80.44 per cent passed confirmatory laboratory tests while 178 samples representing 19.56 per cent failed”.

Orhii further explained: “In the survey, 2,483 (89.64 per cent) out of the 2,770 medicine samples tested during the TRUSCAN survey passed. However, the anti-malarial failure in the total sample population is 6.43 per cent”.

The NAFDAC director general said the result of this nationwide survey by the agency had re-affirmed the confidence of Nigerians in the quality and efficacy of medicines in circulation. He, however, said computation of laboratory results was still on-going.

Orhii said the medicine samples, which gave a pass result on the field using Raman Spectrometer but failed confirmatory laboratory tests, were anti-malarial medicines of Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine (SP) combination.

He said the samples that passed the Truscan test were also sent to the laboratory to validate the Truscan device and investigate the possibility of false positive and negative results.

The NAFDAC director general said the results showed that all the products that passed Truscan test also passed the confirmatory laboratory analysis, ruling out false positive results except for SP combination anti-malarial medicines, which has a high Raman Spectra.

Orhii urged all healthcare providers and the general public to ignore any misleading and contrary information to this effect.

On the six pharmaceutical firms set to get WHO-prequalification in two years, Orhii said: “Presently, six Nigerian pharmaceutical companies have very great prospect of attaining WHO pre-qualification within the next two years as a result of NAFDAC’s intervention to improve products’ quality and standard of Nigerian pharmaceutical companies. These efforts are also geared towards boosting production capacities of these companies and ensuring the country’s self-sufficiency in the manufacture of essential medicines”.

He said the eventual attainment of WHO-prequalification by the six pharmaceutical companies would obviously have multiplier effects on the Nigerian economy. “This will lead to creation of thousands of jobs and more foreign exchange earnings for the country”, he added.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Apr 18 2012. Filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry