Anthony Iwuoma
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), on Tuesday said it would intensify its fight against sales of prohibited sex-enhancement drugs in the country.
Speaking during a press briefing held at the agency’s office in Lagos, the Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, noted that the agency would deploy technology to combat the circulation of the drugs, otherwise known as manpower.
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According to her, NAFDAC’s enforcement unit seized about N3 billion worth of unregistered medicines and sex enhancement drugs during routine exercises.
“The wide circulation of sex-enhancing drugs is a challenge, because we have approved some, but a lot are unapproved or unregistered drugs. About three of four months ago, our investigation and enforcement went to raid the hawkers and carted away about N3bn worth of banned and unregistered medicines and aphrodisiacs or the so-called manpower featured very much in the bunch,” Adeyeye said.
“We keep going after them through our informants, routines and raids, but we cannot stop these products from littering our country; of course, not only our country alone, but it is all over.
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“If they are not sold in physical markets, they are also marketed online. But we know we can do far more and that goes on every day in terms of enforcement to ensure that these dangerous products are taken from the market.”
The DG added that measures were being taken to ensure that the agent’s bar codes are not faked.
She said: “We will make use of technology to protect NAFDAC numbers from falsification. We have a track and trace system now where drugs are bar coded which is one of the tools used by regulatory agencies in the world.
“Bar coding technology is being used to bring sanity to the distribution of the supply chain and it is something that we are planning for the future because it requires a target strategy of two or three years.”