Nigeria has destroyed 1,066,214 doses of expired Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccines on Wednesday.
Gatekeepers News reports that the expired vaccines were destroyed at the Gosa Dumping site, about 2Km away from the Idu Railway Station in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) had handed the vaccines to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), which, in turn, presented them to the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency to destroy.
The destruction was supervised by the Executive Director of NPHCDA Faisal Shuaib and the Director-General of NAFDAC Mojisola Adeyeye.
Shuaib said the expired vaccines were destroyed on behalf of the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19, comprising also the Federal Ministry of Health, the NPHCDA and the NAFDAC.
“We had promised you in the last couple of days that we have successfully withdrawn about 1,066,214 of expired Astrazenecal vaccine. As you can see, this vaccine has now been deposited by the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency.
“We have come through in our promise to all Nigerians to be transparent in our delivery of vaccines. These did not expire before we took the decision to withdraw them,” he said.
Shuaib noted that the development was an opportunity for Nigerians to have further faith in the country’s vaccination programme “because we have lived up to the expectations of all Nigerians.”
“We had the option if we were to take the advice of some experts to try and use these vaccines even beyond the labelled expiry date. But working together with my sister, the DG of NAFDAC, we took that decision to destroy the vaccines at the point that they got expired,” he added.
