The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), on Friday, warned patent medicine dealers in Imo against selling lethal, counterfeit and expired drugs to unsuspecting members of the public.

NAFDAC’s director-general, Mojisola Adeyeye, issued the warning in Owerri during a sensitisation workshop on pharmacovigilance and drug distribution safety.

The workshop was organised primarily for members of the Nigerian Association of Patent and Proprietary Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED).

Mrs Adeyeye, represented by the South-East zonal director of the agency, Festus Ukadike, warned “greedy” operators against prioritising high financial profits over human lives through dangerous drug distribution practices.

“Any unregistered product is fake. If you sell unregistered products, it means you are selling fake products,” she said.

According to her, commercial interests must never justify endangering public health.

She decried sharp practices within the distribution network, including the illegal revalidation of expired shelf dates, label alterations and reliance on “dubious” itinerant suppliers offering deep discounts.

The NAFDAC boss explained that the ban on the sale of dangerous, unregistered and controlled substances remained in force.

She listed the substances to include high-dose tramadol variants, anarcha and discontinued or expired oral suspensions, which were being illegally circulated at the grassroots.

“Expired medicines have no second life; once they have expired, they must never be given a second chance to endanger human lives,” she said.

She said NAFDAC had deployed intelligence-driven surveillance and handheld digital scanners to track supply chains, raid illegal warehouses and shut down the premises of non-compliant vendors.

“Vendors engaging in criminal revalidation or sale of falsified drugs will face immediate business closure, product forfeiture, heavy administrative sanctions, and criminal prosecution,” she said.

Delivering a lecture on “Good Storage and Distribution Practices,” an assistant chief regulatory officer of the agency, Cletus Agwu, underscored the importance of adopting minimum operational standards and maintaining manufacturer-built quality throughout the supply chain.

Mr Agwu charged wholesalers and distributors to procure medical products exclusively from authorised manufacturers and supply them only to legally permitted entities.

He emphasised that distributors “must maintain rigorous quality systems, proper temperature controls, and accurate documentation.”

“Whatever is not documented is not done,” Mr Agwu said.

In another lecture on “Pharmacovigilance”, the NAFDAC state coordinator, Helen Okanya, highlighted the importance of monitoring medicine safety after market introduction.

“No medicinal product is entirely safe for all humans in all places at all times; we must always live with some measures of uncertainty,” Ms Okanya said.

She urged patent medicine dealers to actively report suspected adverse drug reactions, product quality problems and substandard medicines using NAFDAC’s digital MedSafety App.

She assured participants that reporting adverse events was strictly aimed at addressing public health problems rather than finding fault or penalising operators.

She disclosed that similar sensitisation programmes had been organised for patent medicine dealers in Okigwe and Orlu Senatorial Districts of the state.

In an interview, the state chairman of NAPPMED, Cyprian Okonkwo, commended NAFDAC for organising the workshop.

Mr Okonkwo said the sensitisation provided immense professional benefits to members, enhancing their understanding of regulatory compliance, safe storage and consumer safety obligations.

He promised to cascade the knowledge gained to grassroots medicine vendors across all 27 local government areas, with particular emphasis on identifying and rejecting banned products.

He further assured that the association would sustain its partnership with NAFDAC to rid the distribution chain of falsified, expired and substandard drugs to protect public health. 

(NAN)