By Meletus EZE
The Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (NNMDA) has said it will assist herbal medicine practitioners to get the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) authentication for their products.
The Director-General of the agency, Dr Sam Etatuvie, made the assertion in Monday in Lagos.
Etatuvie said the agency would bridge the gap between NAFDAC and herbal medicine practitioners, who wish to venture into commercial production.
According to him, the agency has laboratories, researchers and skills that will help carry out analysis on the herbal medicines before it will be pushed to NAFDAC for scrutiny.
“Part of what we do at NNMDA is to work with herbal medicine practitioners. We stand as a bridge between them and NAFDAC to see that their works come out well.
“Going into commercial production can be costly for herbal practitioners; it costs money which many of these practitioners do not have and this makes discouragement to set in.
“In a situation whereby the practitioner wants to go into commercial production, it must necessarily adhere strictly to NAFDAC rules as regards herbal medicine.
“This is where we will come in to allow these herbal medicine practitioners to use our laboratory, researchers and skills to analyse the medicine before pushing it to NAFDAC,’’ Etatuvie said.
He said most of the products the agency sends to NAFDAC for listing had gone through some level of standardisation in various laboratories.
The agency chief said it was NAFDAC’s prerogative to authenticate products, adding that it would give their products and laboratories more credibility, if authentication was done by the regulator.
According to him, it will improve confidence in the quality of the product and ascertain that the information that the agency has been passing to NAFDAC was correct.
Etatuvie urged the herbal medicine practitioners to always go through the guidelines, rules and regulations as laid down by NAFDAC, if they want their products to be listed.
He lauded NAFDAC for calling for the establishment of a national institute for the promotion of herbal medicine in Nigeria, saying that it was a welcome development.
