The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said it will deepen the use of digital technologies to improve access to quality medicines and strengthen healthcare delivery across the country.
Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, disclosed this in Abuja during a panel session at the launch of the Care365 Digital Health Hub. She said about 72 per cent of the agency’s processes are now digitized, bringing greater transparency, efficiency, and global connectivity.
Adeyeye noted that digitisation is critical for Nigeria to move from maturity level 3 to level 4 in the World Health Organisation’s global regulatory benchmarking. “WHO expects strong regulatory agencies to be digitised,” she said.
She explained that NAFDAC’s Green Book, which lists about 7,000 approved products, will be integrated with the Care365 Health Hub device, enabling doctors to prescribe certified medicines.
Highlighting other innovations, she said, NAFDAC’s track-and-trace system was successfully used to monitor millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, and is now deployed for narcotics and maternal and child health commodities to curb falsification; the Scan-to-Verify App allows real-time authentication of medicines, helping consumers detect falsified products, while the Med Safety App, developed for reporting adverse drug reactions and vaccine side effects, has trained more than 20,000 doctors during the pandemic.
Adeyeye added that NAFDAC and the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN) are being benchmarked together and are preparing for maturity level 4, with plans to link licensed pharmacies to care providers through digital platforms.
Also speaking, Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Muyi Aina, reaffirmed commitment to expanding access to quality healthcare. He said the agency is working to ensure 17,000 fully functional Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) nationwide.
According to him, more than 3,000 PHCs are being revitalised with support from regional development commissions, and about 1,200 have been completed. He added that the NPHCDA has retrained 9,000 doctors and nurses serving rural areas and plans to retrain an additional 120,000 health workers.
Aina said the agency is transitioning to e-learning for staff training and digitising health records to improve information sharing across facilities.
