By Adedapo Adesanya
The Director-General of the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mrs Mojisola Adeyeye, has revealed that the agency is set to take delivery of some fake product detecting devices called True Scan which is capable of dictating fake drugs circulating the country.
Mrs Adeyeye made the revelation on Thursday while defending the agency’s budget proposal for the year 2022 before the House Committee on Health Care Services.
According to her, Nigeria was the first country to purchase the device in the world and has so far purchased 40 of the device which each costing $57,000.
“Another way of checking substandard drugs in the country is the use of detection device which FEC approved in December 2020. Each one of these devices cost $57,000 because of our prudence we were able to buy 40 that they are manufacturing as we speak. It is called True Scan.
“NAFDAC was the first country (agency) in the world to use True Scan about 10 years ago and we bought about five or six at that point. We have now bought 40 which FEC has approved and are going to buy more.
“That device you can use it and put on the medicine before it can tell you it is Paracetamol or Panadol but it will not tell you the level whether it is substandard or not. Now it is quantitative. It can tell you whether it is fortified or substandard,” she said.
The Director-General also said that the agency was faced with challenges from cabals, she said that there are so many cabals that are into the counterfeiting of drugs in Nigeria adding that ”we couldn’t overrun these cabals.”
“Some cabals fight us in the course of our work and we are committed to putting an end to the killing of Nigerians through fake products,” she said.
The Director-General presented an estimate of N25.2 billion for the 2022 fiscal year expenditure and revenue projections of the agency including capital projects earmarked for execution.
In summary of the capital projects, the agency had earmarked, N2.9 billion is for the building of state offices, N1.7 billion for generators, N1.4 billion for laboratory equipment, N1.42 billion for motor vehicles, N666 million for information and communications technology and N78 million for furniture, totalling N6.01 billion
Moreover, in the 2022 budget, the agency had earmarked N6.78 billion for staff emoluments, N262 billion for equipment and N157.8 million for the purchase of laptop computers and N40.1 million for the building of its Ebonyi state office.
Speaking also on the proposed amount budgeted for vehicles in the 2022 budget for the agency, Mrs Adeyeye said that before now the agency had depended on other organizations vehicles to work.
“We did not have vehicles when I can in, vehicles are our lifeline, 90 per cent of our work is fieldwork and we can not effectively do them if there are no vehicles. All the vehicles we have purchased or proposing to purchase are been and will be tracked to avoid situations where the vehicles will be diverted for something else other than our work.
“In a case where an organisation uses its cars to convey us for inspection, we can’t be fair in our judgement so the NAFDAC needs vehicles for inspection and many other duties,” she added.
