Opening Remark By Prof. Adeyeye C. M
Director General NAFDAC
Commissioning Of The Narcotic Drugs Serialization Pilot Project
Lagos, Nigeria
18th January, 2024.
Honourable guests, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen of the press. All protocols duly observed.
It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I welcome you to this historic event, the commissioning of the narcotic drugs serialization pilot project. This momentous occasion symbolizes a significant milestone in our commitment to delivering quality, efficacious, and easily verifiable medical products to the Nigerian consumer by adequately securing the drug distribution network.
As a regulatory agency saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the safety and quality of medicines, NAFDAC places utmost importance on good distribution practices. Indeed, a core mandate of the agency is ensuring that distribution of medical products along the pharmaceutical supply chain reflects best global practices. However, one of the greatest challenges that we face today in the healthcare sector is the proliferation of substandard and falsified medicines. In our country, this problem is further compounded by the chaotic drug distribution practices by unscrupulous elements of society who have no value for human lives. These are the sharp practices that the Traceability project (Track and Trace) seeks to stop.
Track and trace (Traceability) is indeed a game changer! With this technology, medicines can now be tracked and traced right from the very source of production, the manufacturing plant, to the end user, the patient. Through the scanning device on an android phone, consumers can now verify the authenticity of the drug product they consume and be assured of the quality of medicines. More importantly, the track and trace technology is a veritable tool to be deployed in the event of medication recalls.
The commissioning event of today is a crystallization of a series of activities that the Agency embarked upon since May, 2018, when we attended the very first GS1 Africa healthcare conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This led to the development and formulation of the Traceability Strategy document, a five-year implementation roadmap for pharmaceutical products that was launched by the then Honourable Minister for Health in October, 2020.
Obviously, the need to commence the track and trace of pharmaceutical products with narcotic medicines is a very strategic one. Narcotic drugs occupy a very prime place in healthcare, and due to the very high propensity for abuse, diversion of this group of essential medicines cannot always be overruled. While the commissioning event of today is with regards to this class of medicines only, it is expected that this pilot will be on for about one year, during which we expect to have been familiar with all that will be necessary to enhance the deployment and full implementation of the track and trace project for other drug classes in scalable phases.
In closing, I seize this opportunity to thank our technical partner in this journey, GS1 Nigeria. I also commend the Solution Provider that was selected for this pilot project, Newsoft Nigeria Plc, for all the efforts thus far.
Finally, I thank all the representatives of companies that are present here today for agreeing to go with the Agency on this journey. I believe that the commissioning event that we are witnessing today will mark the beginning of a new level of safety for all our patients.
Thank you all.
