By Sarah NEGEDU
As part of efforts of ridding the nation’s capital of counterfeit and fake drugs, the FCT Administration last week raided some pharmaceutical and patent stores to enforce compliance with laid down operational standards.
The FCTA Taskforce on Counterfeit and Fake drugs, went round patent and pharmacy stores in the satellite towns, to inspect the storage conditions of drugs and remove drugs not registered by NAFDAC.
Some of the stores sealed for selling fake drugs include the Chikamsi Pharmacy and Stores Ltd and e-Health Pharmacy and Stores ltd, White House Plaza, near Karu Market, in Abuja Municipal Area Council.
The team also inspected Palax medicine store, Odera Pharmacy ltd, Helium Medical Services Ltd, Steps Pharmacy Ltd, all located along Nyana-Jikwoyi road, Karu.
Compliance directive was also issued and drugs confiscated for not having NAFDAC number or beyond their operative threshold.
Explaining the exercise, Head of Pharmaceutical Inspectorate of the Health and Human Services Secretariat, HHSS, Aje Oga, said the raid is to ensure that the condition under which drugs are kept and sold are hygienic and conducive.
“We have NAFDAC as a member of the taskforce to ensure that they go round the drugs on the counters in every pharmacy or patent medicine shop. So far, in all the shops we have gone to, less than one percent are without problems. It is not always punitive measures are taken to ensure compliance one can also deploy corrective measures. We told them the right thing to do, and they complied,” he stressed.
The director in charge of Abuja Zonal of the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, PCN, Peter Iliya, noted that the risk of having non-complying drugs outlets, is that one may not be sure of the quality of products and services available to the people.
Iliya, a statutory member of the taskforce, opined that “the compliance level in FCT is not optimal, so there is much room for improvement. And for those who are complying, we commend them, and we encourage them to continue to keep complying as excellence is supposed to be the ultimate goal of any professional practice.
“But for those, who don’t comply, they should be warned that the arms of the law will catch up with them. As the wheel of justice maybe slow, but surely, and steadfastly, it will grind to its final destination with devastating consequences for those who are doing the wrong thing.”
Meanwhile, the FCT Ministerial Task Force Team on City Sanitation marked major areas suspected to be criminal hideouts along the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport road corridor for demolition.
Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement to the Minister of FCT, Ikharo Attah who led the exercise, said the place pose security threat.
He said the bulldozer would in few days hit the Bassanjiwa, Fataan community that are near the main gate of the local wing of Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport.
Attah also disclosed that all the shanties and illegal structures around the Bassan Jiwa station of the railway close to the airport corridor will be pulled down.
