Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), said it has enlisted 600 pharmacists (already working in different fields) into a new initiative Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Program – of the Agency.
A statement signed by the Resident Media Consultant Sanyo Akintola, the agency said the initiative is part of the renewed efforts to mitigate substandard and falsified drugs and unwholesome food with a view to taking regulation to the doorstep of the Nigerian people.
Speaking while receiving the pharmacists, the Director General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye urged them to serve Nigeria with honour and integrity,
She explained that the 600 service-ready pharmacists, already pursuing their careers in different fields, were drawn from all thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory, representing every one of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
Adeyeye also said that each of the volunteer was selected not by chance, but through a deliberate and transparent process that balanced merit, availability, and fair geographic representation, so that no state and no region is left behind in this national effort, adding that the Programme is more than an internship or an attachment.
‘It is an investment in you, and through you, in the regulatory future of this country.’
She said they would be exposed to the real work of medicines regulation: pharmacovigilance, compliance monitoring, quality assurance, data collection, and public sensitisation against drug abuse.
The DG – NAFDAC said they would also learn what it means to stand between the Nigerian public and substandard, falsified, or dangerous products.
She said the vision behind the programme was to build, over time, a national reserve of working pharmacists who can be called upon at short notice wherever the health of Nigerians is at risk: during a product recall, a suspected circulation of falsified medicines, or an emergency in a hard-to-reach community to volunteer for a few hours or days. .
Adeyeye explained that her ambition was that within the next few years, every state of the federation would have a standing pool of trained, vetted and mobilizable pharmacists working alongside ‘our state Offices, so that NAFDAC’s regulatory presence is felt not only in our laboratories and at our ports of entry, but in every market, community pharmacy, patent medicine store and primary health centre in this country.’
She emphasized integrity that is beyond negotiation, noting that in the course of service the young pharmacists would encounter offers and pressures designed to compromise them.
She however, urged them to reject such offers, adding that the moment a regulator can be bought, the public loses its only protection.
The Coordinator of NAFDAC Training School, Dr Tunde Sigbeku reinstated that his role is to ensure impacting of knowledge, which is the bedrock of capacity and efficiency while the volunteers’ physical resourcefulness and strength are the vehicles that drive the mission.
Sigbeku noted that being a volunteer is more of call to service than a title, adding that it’s a call to responsibility and it calls for devotion and determination to serve.
He said “In the online training school, we will be giving good details of how NADAC operates. We are going to be sharing with you the activities of Post Market Surveillance, Pharmacovigilance, awareness on Prevention of Antimicrobial Resistance through proper use of medicines and veterinary medicines in livestock and fish, Inspection and Enforcement I&E, Narcotic and Controlled Substances”.