The Director General of the National Agency for Foods and Drug Administration and Control, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, has stressed the need for regional collaboration among medicines regulatory agencies in West Africa.
Adeyeye made the call on Thursday at the opening of a Technical Workshop holding in Lagos, Nigeria.
The two-day workshop is preparatory to the Steering Committee Meeting of the West African Medicines Harmonisation Regulatory (WA-MRH) Project billed for Saturday.
Adeyeye said the goal of collaboration is to “ensure that we have quality medicines for our people to reduce falsify medicines”.
Adeyeye said collaboration will also strengthen the regulatory framework to ensure that the weaker regulatory agencies are strengthened.
According to her: “If the regulatory agency of my neighbour is weak, then I am going to be weak because that will be false medicines coming through such a neighbouring country.”
She said NAFDAC is getting funding from WAHO and deriving other benefits noting that three of Nigeria’s pharmaceutical companies have submitted dossiers – list of medicines -through WAHO for regional approval.
This, she said, means “there will be trade if those products are approved because they can export their products to the West African countries”.
Speaking, Dr. Carlos Brito, WAHO Director of Public Health, said it is the responsibility of WAHO to put in place mechanism of solidarity to help countries in the region to solve their problems.
Brito said: “WAHO and ECOWAS have a very strong mechanism of solidarity that can be used.
“We consider integration better for us to achieve health for all in the region.
“Our countries are not on the same level of development and very often it is very necessary to help countries to strengthen programme, to strengthen capacity in our 15 countries.
“We are committed to the work of integration where all our countries utilise what is better done in one country to the interest of the entire region.”
The technical workshop will produce documents for consideration by the Steering Committee that will be chaired by WAHO Director-General, Prof. Stanley Okolo, on Saturday.
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