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Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, has said her vision is to take the agency to maturity level four, a global benchmark by the World Health Organisation, WHO.
In her words: “The next step is maturity level four. We are already working on this. This will bring greater news to the pharmaceutical industry. This will mean that any product approved by NAFDAC in Nigeria can be traded globally. That is where my vision is.”
Prof. Adeyeye, while speaking in a briefing in Abuja, pointed out that NAFDAC has achieved maturity level three.
The maturity level three categorisation, apart from assuring Nigerians the drugs approved in the country are of high quality and safe, puts the country in a good place to start manufacturing its own vaccines.
This makes NAFDAC the third in Africa and among the very few agencies in the world to achieve this global benchmark in terms of quality of medicines, regulatory inspection, laboratory testing, clinical trials, market control etc.
She said: ”The WHO global benchmarking is all about comparing regulatory agencies with the best in the world. WHO told us we had to meet 868 recommendations before we can get to maturity level three.
“It sounded impossible, but my Directors stood by me all the way. There is also a group of young people in NAFDAC called the Global Benchmarking Team; they have sacrificed a lot. They marked whichever recommendations we have met.
“NAFDAC is the third in Africa and only very few in the world (I’m talking of low and middle-income countries). This is a great achievement for NAFDAC.”