The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye has expressed confidence that Nigeria would soon start manufacturing vaccines, with the upgrading of existing laboratories across the country.
She stated that achieving the ISO 9001 in June 2019, which is the world’s most recognised Quality Management System (QMS) standard, places the country in good standing to strive to get to maturity level three, which enables the country manufacture its own vaccines.
Speaking during the NAFDAC’s Staff Recognition Award Ceremony for 2019 and 2020, where serving and retired staff were awarded for excellence and dedication, Prof. Adeyeye said, “NAFDAC is a leading national regulator in Africa. The Agency is driven by international standards and best practices.
“Our new normal started three years ago when we started quality management system that now makes us to focus more on the customers, the image of the organisation in order to ensure that we are a standard operating procedure-driven organisation. This led us to achieving ISO 9001 in 2019 June. We moved on to the global benchmarking where we adopted international best practices and we are still adopting international best practices.
“With regards to the establishment of the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) global benchmarking and adoption of international best practices, we want to get to maturity level three so that Nigeria can manufacture her own vaccines, and we are all working on this every day.
“We are upgrading the agency’s laboratories to international standards using equipment that are compliant to ISO 17025. NAFDAC laboratories are changing very rapidly with improvements in new equipment and supplies.
“Our four laboratories that were accredited before I came have received re-accreditation. We have also gotten a new lab – the Yaba Biologies and Vaccines Lab accredited for the first time. And our two other labs will be accredited very soon.”
She added: “In similar efforts to enhance the local production of pharmaceuticals in Nigeria, the agency has renewed and updated its 5 + 5 validity policy because we want local content. We want more local manufacturing – to reverse it from 70 percent imports to 70 percent locally manufactured products.