The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has pledged to ensure herbal medicine products improvement to enable global acceptance.

The agency’s director-general, Mojisola Adeyeye, made the promise in a message to commemorate the 2023 International Traditional Medicine Day, celebrated every Aug. 31.

According to a statement by NAFDAC’s media consultant, Olusayo Akintola, Ms Adeyeye commended the efforts of herbal medicines manufacturers across the country for their resilience.

Ms Adeyeye noted with pride the development of several herbal formulations and their progress from the clinical trials to the approval stage by NAFDAC.

She said the guidelines for the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) in herbal medicine production had been prepared by the agency.

According to her, NAFDAC is working on a series of trainings for practitioners to get accustomed to the guidelines.

Ms Adeyeye said officers of the agency would commence vigorous inspections of facilities to ascertain the level of preparedness of the herbal practitioners in the business after the training.

According to her, NAFDAC will monitor and ensure compliance with the guidelines after the training and step down knowledge of the guidelines to the more than 614 herbal medicine facilities nationwide.

The NAFDAC boss disclosed that the stakeholder’s training would start with Lagos, which had more than 317 facilities.

She said after the training, the herbal practitioners would be given a few weeks to prepare for the inspection visits by NAFDAC personnel.

Ms Adeyeye warned that any herbal practitioner that did not meet the agency’s standards would have the facility either shut down or placed on hold.

She noted that the agency was mostly worried about hygiene in herbal medicine practice, and so was training and counselling owners of the facilities visited to change their filling process.

The NAFDAC boss identified capsule filling as one aspect of their operations posing a big challenge to NAFDAC, as most herbal medicines were in capsule or syrup form, and they did not have automated filling machines and used the manual, unsafe method.

She noted that many Nigerians were using herbal medicine and that the earlier the standard was raised, the better for the country.

She promised the agency would find out how practitioners sourced and stored their raw materials and finished products.

(NAN)