Fake Drugs: Community Pharmacist Back Raid Ongoing Raid by NAFDAC
By Towncriernews
Edo State chapter of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) on Monday backed the on-going raid by the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on illegal warehouses for drugs being kept indiscriminately, describing it as a right step.
The chapter also said to ban on the open market sales of drugs would be beginning of implementation of the country’s drug distribution policy which stipulates penalties defaulters.
Addressing a press conference in Benin City which the association said it became after a recent retreat, chairman of ACPN, Allen Iboi also took a swipe on the National Association of Patent and Propriety Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED) whose activities he claimed try to undermine the activities of the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN), the body that regulate the establishment of any pharmaceutical sales or distribution point as NAPPMED carry out self regulation and exploit the existence of the open market to stock their premises with both drugs they are qualified to sell and those they are not.
He lamented that while the last administration in Kano state tried to shut the open market for drugs by providing a building for the drug market, the same could not be said of Idumota in Lagos, Onitsha and Aba in South East Nigeria where the open market thrives and gives room for abuse and counterfeiting.
Iboi said “The chaotic drug distribution system in Nigeria continues to undermine the health indices and continues to pose a huge danger to public health safety and national security. There have been a long standing advocacy by the organised pharmacists sector to get a sane and coordinated drug distribution system, in Nigeria, that advocacy led to the national drug distribution guideline as well as the idea around coordinated wholesale centres unfortunately, the lack of implementation of these guidelines continue to slow down any progress that we made in the drug distribution system.
“Invariably the drug distribution sector continue to be controlled by the open drug market and these are illegal entities, they can be likened to a cartel where drugs are distributed and that continue to undermine public safety and national security
“NAFDAC has been carrying out raids in Idumota, Lagos and Onitsha and in Aba, South and the discoveries have been very worrisome to every well meaning Nigerian. The report of NAFDAC is very worrisome. We want a clean coordinated and safe drug distribution system in Nigeria.
“Vaccines stored in dilapidated unventilated rooms, large consignment of banned substances, expired medicines set for revalidated, free HIV drugs diverted and sold in the open drugs markets up to 12 truck loads of hard drugs, banned drugs, control drugs discovered in warehouses in these open market and we as a professional body, we are here to make this media advocacy to say we support absolutely the efforts of NAFDAC in trying to rid the system of fake counterfeit and illicit drugs
“It is time to declare expiry dates on these open drug market systems because drugs are essential commodities, drugs are poison, only the dosage makes the difference
“What we have is a cartel that is only interested in depleting the health indices of Nigeria.”
On NAPPMED, he said “The National Association of Patent and Proprietary Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED) have constituted themselves into a regulation themselves and so we see members going to NAPPMED to get approvals to open medicine stores so before they to the PCN, they have set up the shops and they are selling medicine and they are so widely proliferated and they also operate like a cartel. There scope of medicine that patent medicine stores can sell but they stock anything and everything and where do they get these from, again the open market.”
