The National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control, (NAFDAC) has enjoined herbal medicine practitioners to abide by the agency’s rules.
Mr Phebean Malomo-Odu, Deputy Director, Herbal and Neutriceutical Division of Drug Evaluation and Research of NAFDAC, gave the advice in Onitsha, Anambra, during a one-day workshop for herbal medicine practitioners in the South-East.
Malomo-Odu said that herbal medicine had been embraced World wide and that it was a good foreign exchange earner, adding that the country’s herbal medicine producers must take advantage of the trend through engaging in acceptable international best practices.
“They should have good manufacturing practice. You cannot introduce quality to a finished product but you can build-in quality right away from the raw material to the end.
“That’s why NAFDAC is concerned about being sure that they adhere to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). So, with that, we would know that quality is built into the product’’, she said.
She advised the practitioners to ensure 100 percent cleanliness in their manufacturing rooms, ventilation of the rooms, proper documentation of each herb, processes and herbal medicine produced.
In a paper, `Extant Regulatory Control for Herbal Advertisement’’, the Deputy Director, Advertisement Control Division, Mrs. Sinmidele Onabajo, noted that all publicly advertised herbal products must be registered with NAFDAC.
Onabajo noted that the agency would verify all herbal products’ advertisement placements before its publication and airing.
Onabajo noted that days of making unfounded claims about the efficacy and multiple function of a single herbal product in the media without NAFDAC verification and authorization was over.
“We are here to educate them on the procedures to get an advertisement permit, to make sure that before they go ahead and advertise, they have that permit with them.
“When they have the permit with them, we would have taken care of all the excesses of the claims they intend to advertise. So, the permit is the key to advertisement in the states.
“And in the event that they don’t have it, we would now carry sanctions to make sure that only the people who have the necessary permit, will be allowed to inform the people, so that they can make right choices’’, she further stated.
Chief Eugene Nwachukwu, Vice-President of National Association of Nigerian Traditional Medicine Practitioners, (NANTMP), said that there had been growing patronage of herbal products by Nigerians within the past 10 years.
Nwachukwu said that there was no difference between herbal medicines from China, India, Pakistan and that of Nigeria, except in the area of packaging and proper processing.
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