NAFDAC Signs Partnership Deal with Medical Sciences Varsity on Research

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFADC) and the University of Medical Sciences (UniMed), Ondo, Ondo State, yesterday, signed an agreement to carry out research on food safety, herbal medicine and drug discovery.

The agreement would formalise collaboration between the two institutions and commit them to working closely together in the areas of training, capacity building, institutional building, applied research and community-based projects.

The Director General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, dropped the hint at the official signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding between the agency and UniMed, in Lagos on Tuesday.

Adeyeye said the two institutions would be collaborating in the areas of scientific research, such as conducting and promoting mycotoxin research, technology transfer in the area of quality control and   assurance, risk assessment and management in food systems.

The NAFDAC boss, in a statement by the agency’s Resident Media Consultant, Sayo Akintola, added that the partnership would also seek for grants to fund collaborative Research and Development (R&D) on mycotoxin research, food safety and other related inter-disciplinary research.

Adeyeye further explained that, “It’s a significant effort that we are trying to strengthen our cooperation and collaboration especially at this time where healthy living and safety of food have become important to the citizens of this nation.’’

She expressed worry that people die prematurely as a result of eating moulds in food.

‘’To eat food with phallotoxin or mallotoxin or whatever toxin. Many people are hypersensitive to molds in food,’’ she said,

She noted with dismay that Nigerians were so fast in attributing such deaths to witches in the village. “

No. it may be from our food. It may be from substandard and falsified medicines,” she warned.

The NAFDAC boss explained that she lost her brother on September 1, 2021, to the intake of such unwholesome medicines, adding that he had complained that he took some anti-malarial medicines about a year before which incapacitated him, and made him not to be able to walk, without suffering a stroke. She said he also said that he had been itching for about six weeks.

“He didn’t have a stroke. He said it is anti-malarial medicine. I said what is the name of the medicine.”

She lamented that people are fond of buying medicines from patent medicine vendors and corner drug stores or hawkers without prescription, adding that, “the lesson from this is that intellectual capacity drives regulatory system because if somebody doesn’t understand what food is, even starting with micronutrient in food and understanding the role of contaminants be it phallotoxin, macro toxin, whatever, it’s almost like digging one’s grave slowly.

“The rest is history as he died a painful death in UCH’’, she noted with a tone laden with grief. She asked rhetorically ‘’how many people have gone that way?

“That’s why I take what we are doing seriously, to safeguard the health of our people. It is about food safety. It is about medicines that do what, quality, safety, and efficacy.”

She said a country that puts emphasis on science is a country that has a future.