Mojisola Adeyeye, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) director-general, says the agency is working with international partners to ensure Nigeria gets vaccines with an extended expiration date.

“But going forward, we are working with international partners to ensure the expiration date of any vaccine we will be receiving are up to five or six months,” she stated.

Ms Adeyeye spoke against the backdrop of expired one million doses of vaccines in November destroyed by NAFDAC, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency and the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency.

The 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines were destroyed at the Gosa Dumping site in Abuja.

Ms Adeyeye said on Wednesday in Lagos that the expired vaccines had a short expiration date.

“When developed countries started using vaccine for many months, we didn’t have access to them until we started receiving donations, not just through COVAX alone but from some countries also,” explained the NAFDAC boss. “The expiration date was shorter than what it was supposed to be and between the time we tested and start using it, there was no enough time and that was the only reason not because we were careless.”

(NAN)