National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has said over 50 percent of certificates of pharmaceutical products (CPP) of medicines imported into Nigeria are fake.
Gatekeepers News reports that a certificate of a pharmaceutical product is a document issued in a format recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The certificate establishes the status of the product in the exporting country.
The NAFDAC Director-General (DG), Mojisola Adeyeye, while speaking on Monday at a stakeholders’ engagement meeting with regulators, policymakers, and law enforcement agencies in Abuja, said sending a CPP out to another country gives assurance on the quality of the product.
Adeyeye, however, noted that most certificates of pharmaceutical products imported into Nigeria are fake.
The NAFDAC DG said, “We have a scheme where before medicines that were approved leave that part of the world, we do pre-shipment testing, and that comes with CPP to assure us of quality, but that is not the case, because through our scheme we have been able to stop over 140 products that were approved for coming in.
“We found out that more than 50 percent of the CPPs that come into our country are fake. Part of those responsible is our people that go to China or India and we are going to deal with it.
“We are very stringent than ever and there is no cutting of corners, we have blacklisted many companies, we have sanctioned them because we want people to respect our people.”
Adeyeye said trade is a mutual agreement adding that if that agreement is harming one party to the deal, it would be stopped.
She added, “If a company is suspected to be compromising, in two hours we will be there, and we will shut the company down.”
