The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has advised the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to reduce difficulties in products registration processing.
The Global Adviser to the Foundation, Dr Vincent Ohonkhai, gave the advice when he visited the agency in Abuja last Wednesday.
He urged the agency to focus more on value added activities, and ensure that products get to consumers in time, adding that most regulation agencies lacked efficiency in capacity building.
“Long approval time contributes to the phenomenon of drug lag; where the drug is available somewhere in the world, it takes much longer time before it gets to us.
“If you have a very efficient drugs or vaccine that is already available in US and it takes several years to get to a place, not necessarily Nigeria but to any country in Africa, you are already losing time.
“That is why we are trying to work with a lot of partners on that; we need to see how we can address this issue,” he said.
Ohonkhai advised NAFDAC to collaborate with other countries to combat counterfeit and fake medicines to achieve global agenda to ensure good health for the people.
He said that the efforts of Nigeria and NAFDAC at reducing counterfeit products were acknowledged globally, adding that partnering with other countries would help in the attainment of global health agenda.
Ohonkhai also advised the agency to facilitate access to global polio eradication initiatives, adding that they should improve on manufacturers’ input in their activities.
Responding, Dr Paul Orhii, Director General of NAFDAC, said that processing of products registration had lingered for long in the past, adding that the agency reviewed the process to 90 day time-line.