National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on Monday disclosed that it had made some progress with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) intervention fund allocated to it by the Federal Government.
This is contained in a statement signed by the Director of Public Affair for the agency, Dr. Abubakar Jimoh, and issued to newsmen in Abuja.
According to the statement, the Director-General of the agency, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, made this known when she received the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on COVID-19.
The statement said that the committee was at the agency as part of its oversight function to find out how the agency was utilising the intervention fund.
Adeyeye told the committee that the agency had been able to procure so much equipment from the N2 billion intervention fund to checkmate the pandemic. She said that progress had been made in the creation of COVID-19 laboratory services and regulations of vaccines.
She said that workers of the agency had also been trained with the responsibility of texting vaccine regulation and control, adding that more training will be done to upgrade the system.
“2020 is an unusual year where everything was almost upside-down, what has been done in terms of damage the pandemic has brought all over the world, the virus has infected a lot and about one million death worldwide.
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“The virus has constituted an extraordinary challenge to global health. In terms of preparedness, NAFDAC has done so much, we have put our best into the regulation of vaccines.
“In terms of use of medicine, this current NASS has acted positively for the health sector, unfortunately for us in Nigeria, we neglected the health sector for a decade, but the government has taken the step to start bringing things back to correct the past damage.
“For an agency like NAFDAC, you cannot compromise on things necessary otherwise, you might be compromising with the health of people,” she stressed.
She said that the agency had also registered many companies, upgraded the existing laboratories for texting of vaccine at international standards.
She said the agency was communicating with other countries to get more vaccines, adding that the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently made AstraZeneca Vaccine available to Nigeria.
According to her, NAFDAC Vaccine Committee is also working on the scrutinisation of another vaccine to tackle the pandemic and that when the process is completed, the information will be made available to Nigerians.
She added that NAFDAC was ready to do its part in terms of vaccine approval or any drug in the outbreak of any disease, saying that what the agency needs is only support. She said that all the vaccines approved for the treatment of COVID-19 had gone through stringent regulatory processes from stages 1 to 3 under the “Emergency Use Authorisation”.
The Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee, Rep. Haruna Mshelia, earlier stated that his members were in the agency to evaluate and see how NAFDAC had utilised the intervention fund. He described COVID-19 as a disease that spreads fast which must not be joked with.
