National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has said it is working on reducing the importation of drugs from its present 70% to 30% by 2025.
Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, told the Newsmen in Lagos that this could be achieved through increased local manufacturing of drugs.
Adeyeye said that increasing local drug manufacturing would help curb the prevalence of substandard drugs and ensure drug security in the country.
“If a country is over-dependent on importation of medicine, such country will get substandard drugs and if not for COVID-19, we wouldn’t have woken up from our slumber as a country”, she said.
“So, we want to change the 70% importation of drugs into the country to 30% by 2025, so that as a nation we can say we have drug security because we don’t have that now.
The DG noted that the agency had also tightened the belt around the shipment of drugs into the country.