The National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control on Tuesday said local manufacturing of pharmaceutical ingredients will aid the production of quality medicine.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a four-day workshop titled, ‘Sustainable healthcare development: Workshop on local manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients and excipients,’ in Lagos, the Director-General, NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, explained that over-dependence on food importation was a sign of insecurity to any country.
According to her, “Over-dependence on food importation is a sign of insecurity to any country. Our aim is to ensure 70 per cent of the imported products is reduced to 30 per cent, so that we can manufacture 70 per cent.”
She added, “The COVID-19 pandemic taught us bitter lessons because there was hoarding of drugs and API products. It is important we manufacture a lot of what we need locally. If the active API has impurity or it’s bad, it will slowly kill the kidneys, and heart, thereby jeopardising the lives of our people.
“We have brought people here to sensitise us as a nation in terms of the property of API that could affect the product.”
While analysing the benefits of local manufacturing of APIs, Adeyeye added that it would open room for African free trade, saying it would help to reduce the importation rate to 30 per cent.