The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has said it implemented a total budget of $2,305,695.03 from Global Fund’s grant cycle 6, to strengthen operations, and build capacity among others.
Director General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye disclosed this at a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, November 6, 2023.
Adeyeye informed that $36,965.00 was invested in building staff capacity on pharmacovigilance strengthening and ADR monitoring.
“Over the years, NAFDAC has invested in the capacity building of staff in Pharmacovigilance (PV). However, in ensuring sustained delivery of its mandate, the skills and competence of its staff require continuous capacity strengthening and advancement.
“The BL33 under the RSSH 2 grant was used to support the capacity strengthening of PV officers in recent development and advances in PV and Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) reporting in Nigeria in line with the newly revised Nigerian National Pharmacovigilance Policy and Implementation Framework 2020 document.
“NAFDAC has successfully built the capacity of 76 staff members across 36+1 states on Pharmacovigilance of AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (ATM) commodities”, she said.
The NAFDAC DG also added that the Global Fund BL 106 supported NAFDAC in acquiring a mobile app for ADR reporting and monitoring Pharmacovigilance activity for three years ending in 2023 for $8,684.21.
“The implementation of a mobile app has streamlined the reporting and monitoring of adverse drug reactions (ADR) and improved the overall responsiveness of the healthcare system.”
Speaking further, the DG said to ensure that the medicinal product was the right medicine that the label carries, Global Fund (BL36) supported three NAFDAC state offices with three field devices (Truscan) for rapid spot check for product quality worth $184,112.00
“NAFDAC’s state offices have been further equipped with some devices for rapid screening of product quality, ensuring that unsafe and substandard products are swiftly identified and removed from circulation. Alongside this is the funding of the Yaba Central Drug Control Laboratory (CDCL).
“Strengthening one of the NAFDAC ISO 17025 laboratories (CDCL Yaba) to conduct a comprehensive analysis of ATM and other disease program medicines ($944,605.00) was another huge contribution of Global Fund (BL38).
“The purpose is to support and strengthen existing NAFDAC Laboratories to sustain their ISO-17025 Accreditation and to get WHO Prequalification.
“This initiative has enhanced NAFDAC’s laboratory capabilities, enabling comprehensive analysis of many medicinal products. Significant procurement included Liquid Chromatography, Dissolution Apparatus, Disintegration Apparatus, HPLC (with chiller), FTIR, UV Spectrophotometer, Top load balance, Ultra-Low Freezers, Polarimeter, Incubator, Digital Stopwatches, Digital Thermometers, PH Meters, and NIR Spectrophotometric Scanners.”
She said it was good to share the success story that the Central Drug Control Laboratory, Yaba has attained World Health Organisation Prequalification, partly because of the GF support.
“The implication of this is that many more medicines will be tested for quality in our laboratory, and this will ensure access to quality medicines by our citizens.
“Another impactful support from GF was the support to NAFDAC for phased implementation of traceability of health products $1,131,328.82 – BL136.
“This budget line has been instrumental in rolling out a phased implementation of traceability for health products in Nigeria.
“This budget line supported training a total of 1,561 stakeholders trained across 36 states and the FCT comprising 832 in the Public Sector and 729 in the Private Sector.
“Deployment of 435 android-enabled mobile android scanners and 315 internet routers to support traceability of ATM commodities.
“Raising awareness among health sector stakeholders about the Nigeria traceability initiative and the engagement of stakeholders in the development of the Pharmaceutical Traceability Regulation.
“Strengthening market control of NAFDAC’s regulated products medicines and vaccines. All the above have contributed to supply chain visibility, mitigation of substandard falsified medicines, and strengthening of the health systems.
“This support from the Global Fund has had a profound impact on NAFDAC’s goals of ensuring the availability of safe and high-quality ATM health products to Nigerians,” she added.
On his part, Global Fund Acting Executive Secretary County Coordinator Mechanisms, Ibrahim Tajudeen informed that Nigeria was privileged to receive additional resources because of the successful utilisation of the previous grant cycle of 2021 to 2023
He further disclosed that the country as a country received additional resources in the form of grants of $933million which would be spent from January 2024 to December 2026, cut across HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and resilience system strengthening for health for the peak period of 3 years.
