Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control has expressed its commitment to continue the clamp down on banned medicines and unregistered sex-enhancement drugs otherwise known as manpower.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, disclosed this on Tuesday during a press briefing held at the agency’s office in Lagos.
Adeyeye noted that the enforcement unit of the agency seized about N3bn worth of unregistered medicines and manpower drugs during routine exercises.
She said, “The wide circulation of sex-enhancing drugs is a challenge, because we have approved some, but a lot are unapproved or unregistered drugs. About three of four months ago, our investigation and enforcement went to raid the hawkers and carted away about N3bn worth of banned and unregistered medicines and aphrodisiacs or the so-called manpower featured very much in the bunch.
“We keep going after them through our informants, routines and raids, but we cannot stop these products from littering our country; of course, not only our country alone, but it is all over.
“If they are not sold in physical markets, they are also marketed online. But we know we can do far more and that goes on every day in terms of enforcements to ensure that these dangerous products are taken from the market.”
Adeyeye also noted that the agency would deploy the use of bar code technology to protect NAFDAC numbers from being falsified.
“We will make use of technology to protect NAFDAC numbers from falsification. We have a track and trace system now where drugs are bar coded which is one of the tools used by regulatory agencies in the world.”
“Bar coding technology is being used to bring sanity to the distribution of the supply chain and it is something that we are planning for the future because it requires a target strategy of two or three years,” she added.
