*Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, assures the 600 enlisted pharmacists into its new initiative Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Programme will be exposed to exposed to the ‘real work’ of medicines regulation, including pharmacovigilance, compliance monitoring, quality assurance, data collection, and public sensitisation against drug abuse in the West African country
Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect
As part of efforts at minimising substandard, falsified drugs, and unwholesome foods in Nigerian markets, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has enlisted 600 pharmacists, who are already working in different fields, into its new initiative Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Programme.
Sanyo Akintola, Resident Media Consultant to NAFDAC, who disclosed this development in a statement, affirmed the initiative was part of the renewed efforts at mitigating substandard and falsified drugs and unwholesome foods towards taking regulation to Nigerian consumers’ doorsteps.
Adeyeye highlights the selection process
Speaking while receiving the pharmacists, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, Director-General of the health regulatory agency, urged them to serve Nigeria with honour and integrity.
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Prof. Adeyeye stated that the 600 service-ready pharmacists, who are already pursuing their careers in different fields, were drawn from all thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), representing every one of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
The Director-General of the agency also disclosed 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.
According to her, no state and no region is left behind in this national effort, stated she.
Adeyeye explained the programme is more than an internship or an attachment.
She stated: “It is an investment in you, and through you, in the regulatory future of this country.”
The NAFDAC Chief further noted that the select pharmacists would be exposed to the real work of medicines regulation: pharmacovigilance, compliance monitoring, quality assurance, data collection, and public sensitisation against drug abuse.
The Director-General of NAFDAC said they would also learn what it means to stand between the Nigerian public and substandard, falsified, or dangerous products.
On vision for Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Programme
Highlighting the core vision of the programme, Prof. Adeyeye said the vision behind the programme was to build, over time, a national reserve of working pharmacists who could 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.
She noted that her ambition was that within the next few years, every state of the Nigerian Federation would have a standing pool of trained, vetted and mobilisable pharmacists working alongside ‘our state Offices.
Upholding integrity, public trust
The Director-General of NAFDAC explained this effort would make NAFDAC’s regulatory presence felt not only in the agency’s laboratories and at Nigeria’s ports of entry, but in every market, community pharmacy, patent medicine store and primary health centre in this country.
Adeyeye emphasised that integrity that is beyond negotiation.
According to her, in the course of service, the young pharmacists will encounter offers and pressures designed to compromise them on the mandate.
She, however, urged them to reject such offers, adding that the moment a regulator could be bought, consumers lose their only protection in the process.
Dr. Sigbeku: Knowledge remains bedrock of capacity building and efficiency
Commenting on the significance of exposing the 600 young pharmacists to core of medicines regulation in Nigeria, Dr. Tunde Sigbeku Coordinator of NAFDAC Training School, restated that his role is to ensure knowledge impartation, which is the bedrock of capacity and efficiency.
He equally noted that volunteers’ physical resourcefulness and strength are the vehicles that drive the mission.
Sigbeku also said that being a volunteer is more of call to service than a title.
According to him, it’s a call to responsibility and it calls for devotion and determination to serve.
“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,” stated the Coordinator of NAFDAC Training School.