NAFDAC Proposes Life Sentence For Fake Drug Dealers

The National Agency for Food and Drug administration and Control[NAFDAC], has proposed life sentence for fake drug dealers, confiscation of assets of offenders, and use of proceeds to compensate victims, as best ways of fighting fake drugs and substandard products in the country.

The agency's public enlightenment consultant, Ambassador Christabel Okoye, disclosed this in Abakaliki at the weekend  during a one-day training and sensitization workshop for members of the Nigerian Association of Patent and Proprietary  Medicine dealers[NAPPMD].

Okoye frowned at the attitude of some medicine dealers especially in the rural areas who turn their shops into clinics and maternity despite their in-capabilities and inexperience, thereby causing avoidable deaths of poor and unsuspecting patients, and enjoined the patent medicine dealers to report any case of adulterated and fake products to the agency for necessary action. He noted that some patent medicine dealers engage in unauthorized prescriptions[mixing] of drugs, selling of medicines to hawkers, self medication, poor medicine storage conditions, temperature, and poor sanitation within the environment.

Okoye disclosed that in view of the draft bill of the agency before the federal executive council, informants will be adequately compensated. Rather than relying excessively on administrative measures, NAFDAC has reviewed the NAFDAC law with a view to making the penalties stiff, ensuring that the business of fake drugs and substandard products become extremely cumbersome and expensive."