Posted by By George Onah on
Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drugs, Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Dora Akunyili has said that the agency has no plan to ban the sale of pure water in the country.
Calabar - Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drugs, Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Dora Akunyili has said that the agency has no plan to ban the sale of pure water in the country.
Rather, she said all state governments should put plans in place for the disposal of used sachets.
Akunyili who was in Calabar to flag off a grassroots sensitisation effort on drug administration said "I have heard people calling on NAFDAC to ban pure water sales because it generates refuse. I want to call on such people to come to Calabar and see for themselves what is happening in this state. This call is coming because people have refused to do their jobs as Governor Doanld Duke is doing in his state.
"We will not cave in to this pressure to ban pure water because poor people drink pure water and it is also a means of livelihood for many. All we would ensure at NAFDAC is to guaranttee that the water meets the standard requirements."
She said the agency's ongoing road show was to carry its sensitization efforts to the grassroots to correct the wrong notion that "injections are more efficacious than tablets and capsules. I want to say that injections should only be administered where other oral drug alternatives have failed.
"Our people should also begin to reject drug prescription on sachets and packets that do not fully display the name of the drug it contains. That is the only way we can trace the origin of the drug and its composition."
She observed that when the present crop of the agency management was inaugurated a few years ago, "we found out that there was little information about the nefarious and destructive activities of fake drug dealers and counterfeiters. "There was deception and fraud in the system. We then decided to embark on sensitizing the people on all these anomalies and this effort has paid off.
"We have succeeded in stimulating behavorial change in both importers and the consumers. We are succeeding because over 40 percent of goods imported into this country today conform to set standards."