Adeyeye who said this on Monday while fielding questions from journalists in Abuja noted that using substandard, unwholesome products can also lead to kidney failure and death.

Kidney failure happens after your kidneys can no longer properly filter your blood. This causes toxins to accumulate in your body.

According to the President of the Nigerian Association of Nephrology, Dr Adanze Asinobi, about 869 million people globally are suffering from kidney disease and in Nigeria, there is an increasing prevalence of the disease.

Meanwhile, the NAFDAC DG said “We are a very religious country – Muslims and Christians, we fast a lot and it is part of the kidney problem. Your body has to have homeostatic balance, meaning the water level in your body must be enough to make your organs function.

Some people will fast for 20 days or 10 days without drinking even a little bit of water and the kidney is being punished and it can damage your kidney because the kidney does not have water to dilute and filter, that is what some of us do.

“I fast but I fast with common sense. You have to fast with common sense or else you pay with your kidney.”

The NAFDAC boss also warned against patronising hawkers and corner stores for medicines.

“Do not buy medicines from hawkers, do not buy medicines from corner stores, buy medicines from pharmacies.”

NAFDAC Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, disclosed these at a news conference on Wednesday, in Abuja following the agency’s elevation by the global health body to a Maturity Level 3 status.

With the development, Adeyeye said Nigeria’s made products would be trading globally.

The elevation of NAFDAC, Prof. Adeyeye explained, showed that the agency had raised its standards in not just administration and marketing but also in post-marketing, production registration and many others.

Adeyeye said the development equally indicated that NAFDAC had raised its bar in clinical trials, guidelines and procedures, regulatory inspection, laboratory listings, market control, and other regulators, among others.

She attributed the success of her agency to the dedication and commitment of staff to improving the standard.

Açcording to her, the road to success began a few weeks after she assumed duty in 2018, following her appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari to take over the affairs of the agency as director-general.

She said, “We started this journey in January 2018, five weeks after my resumption as NAFDAC Director-General. It was a torturous, tasking and highly demanding journey, but I went through it with the support of my Directors, governing council and other staff who made different kinds of sacrifices towards the realisation of the goal.”

She explained that, “When we started, WHO listed 868 recommendations which we must meet before we get to maturity level three status. Initially, it sounded impossible, but my Directors stood by me all the way, in addition to many others who did all forms of sacrifices to ensure we achieve the feat.”

She spoke further: “In June 2019, WHO officials visited NAFDAC headquarters in Abuja to commence the benchmarking process. Out of the 868 recommendations they listed, we were able to meet over 600 of them and were left with 147 items which were the most difficult ones at that time.

“We started working at it. We organised town hall meetings and retreats for everyone involved along the chain. We made sure that NAFDAC is on the quality system, and that helped us greatly to achieve the feat. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic came and interrupted our programmes. It took a year out of our scheduled time.

“After the COVID-19 fever, we picked up from where we stopped in 2020. We revisited the 147 recommendations and commenced work on them. In July 2021, WHO met with our officials, virtually, and confirmed that we have reduced the 147 recommendations to 33 which were the most difficult ones including regulations.

“We met all the recommendations in October, 2021. In February 2022, WHO officials returned for final inspection and were glad that all items we submitted and claimed to have were intact.

“That was when they told us that we are successful and had met the criteria for maturity level three regulatory agency status. But they asked us not to announce it until we see the letter conveying the message. The much-awaited letter came around 1 am on Wednesday.”

The statement reads in part “NAFDAC wishes to notify the public of the circulation of an unregistered and a fake product called insulin tea claimed to reduce blood sugar level and ‘delete’ sugar in the body. Please note that the NAFDAC number shown on the packaging of this product (NAFDAC Reg. No. 01-8662) is fake; the insulin tea poses a danger to the health of the public. Members of the public are implored to contact the nearest NAFDAC office with any information concerning the distribution, sale, and use of the fake insulin tea.”

She also advised those who had already bought and taken the product to report its adverse effects to the nearest NAFDAC office. She urged Nigerians to report such incidents through the toll-free NAFDAC PRASCOR 20543 from all networks and pharmacovigilance @nafdac.gov.ng. She also stated that the report could also be made via www.nafdac.gov.ng.

The agency said the warning was imperative to ensure people did not risk being vaccinated with the fake Astrazeneca vaccine.

The position of NAFDAC is contained in a statement signed by the agency’s Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, on Sunday, in Abuja.

She said “AZOU gave the license of its vaccine to Serum Institute of India PVT Ltd, (SIIPL), to manufacture this vaccine at a commercial scale. SIIPL is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world and the company got the license by signing the manufacturing agreement. SIIPL gave the vaccine the trade name COVISHIELD, it is the result of cooperation and a technology transfer from AstraZeneca – the University of Oxford to SIIPL. SIIPL is now the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by the number of doses produced and sold globally. More than 1.5 billion doses, which include Polio vaccine, Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Hib, BCG, r-Hepatitis B, Measles, Mumps and Rubella,”

Nigeria on March 2 received 3.92 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines and has since launched the vaccination programme in the country

The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, raised the alarm in a statement released by the agency’s Resident Media Consultant, Sayo Akintola. She warned Nigerians to “refrain from procuring the vaccine online to avoid falling into the wrong hands of merchants of death.”

She said “The public must be on the lookout for these spurious and counterfeit vaccines and other regulated products”

She also warned Nigerians to be vigilant and expose anyone who might want to divert COVID-19 vaccines donated by international donors for profiteering.

Adeyeye who disclosed that the herbal drugs are undergoing review to ensure their safety for use averred that if the herbal drugs are not properly reviewed it could kill fast.

The NAFDAC DG said “In March 2019, we inaugurated the Nigerian Herbal Medicine Product Committee (HMPC) to bridge the gap often created between traditional medicine practitioners and researchers. COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity and we have been encouraging traditional medicine practitioners to submit their herbal formulations for evaluation. We also developed guidelines on how to register herbal medicine online and the labelling of the product. Prof. Maurice Iwu’s application for approval of herbal medicine for the management of COVID-19 is also part of the 40 applications we are reviewing for safety. We use the animal for safety test to ensure the formulation will not kill anybody.  Until a clinical trial is done in a scientific manner, no herbal medicine manufacturer can claim cure or effectiveness to treat COVID-19 associated symptoms. I believe that Nigeria’s herbal medicines may be able to cure COVID-19. They have a lot of potentials and it is time to translate the research of herbs into products of proven safety and efficacy, for the benefit of our people”

Adeyeye who also revealed that reliable researches and reports shows that Remdesivir kills the virus at late stages added that the cost for treating people with chloroquine was way cheaper than with Remdesivir.

She said “On March 20, this year, just before the lockdown, I had a press briefing. At that time, people did not understand what clinical trial treatment meant. Once they hear treatment, they think you can use it anyhow. But clinical trial treatment is a research study to see whether the drug will work or not. In the press briefing, I said I was going through literature to see what others have done and I saw in a particular literature a reliable publication of an article about Chloroquine and Remdesivir (that time nobody was even talking of Remdesivir). This was February of this year. They said in the cell culture, Remdesivir and Chloroquine killed COVID-19 viruses, that is, invitro – in the laboratory. But you cannot translate that to humans unless a clinical trial is done. I kept looking. About two weeks or so later in early March (this was at a time when COVID-19 was at its peak in China); there was a publication where 100 patients were treated with Chloroquine across ten hospitals in six cities, including Wuhan. It said that all of them recovered from the symptoms. They called it that time pneumonia symptom. In the cells, in the lab, Remdesivir and Chloroquine killed COVID-19. At what stage would they be more effective? We didn’t know at that point. Now, we are realising that Chloroquine is effective at the early stage. Remember, Remdesivir and Chloroquine work in the cells. Chloroquine was proven to work in 100 patients. We did not know at that time that the disease has about four phases – pre-exposure stage, early stage, mild stage, and the severe stage. Now we are talking of Remdesivir. We met with Gilead – the maker of Remdesivir about two months ago and they came. They said they have licensed their drug to five Indian companies and one Pakistani company. To treat an average patient will cost about $10 with Chloroquine and cost about $2,500 with Remdesivir. When we now got the profile of Remdesivir, what was recorded in literature and from the manufacturer was that Remdesivir doesn’t work at the early stage. It works at the late stage. But when viruses are in the tube in the laboratory, you won’t know which is late or which is early. Both killed them. We now understand that it is not only one drug that can be effective for COVID-19, but it depends on the stage and the phases of the disease.”

According to Prof Adeyeye, the entries came after the agency asked researchers, scientists and practitioners to submit potential solution for the deadly virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

She said, “I made a call for people to submit their application and I believe we have about three or four now and we are going to expedite the processing because it takes a while for us to go through the laboratory testing and what not but I have already given the directive to expedite. So, where we are right now is just to make sure that the information submitted is okay and by the end of the week, we may be sending these samples to the lab after we must have gone to inspect the site where the products are made because we don’t want a product that somebody will take and the person will start vomiting. So, we will go and inspect the site to make sure that whatever sample we are going to get must have been prepared in an environment that will not make the drug to compromise the health of the user. If somebody says he or she has a remedy for COVID, first of all, we want to know the history of the plant or the family the plant belongs to, background information on the botanical characteristics of the plant, we will also want to know whether the plant has been used for anything before because sometimes, we use one plant for several diseases and the usage will be different for a particular disease. We will also ask for any written or published document about the plant because the plant may not come from Nigeria and it may be available in other climes. So, we want to ensure that we get enough information and once that application is submitted with the information, then we will start the process and part of the process involves inspecting where the medicinal product was prepared to be sure that it is not going to compromise the health of the people.”

Adeyeye told the Newsmen on Tuesday in Abuja that the recruitment became necessary because the agency was too understaffed to effectively perform its statutory duties.

She said that the agency hoped and prayed that it would get employees in 2020 to drive its mandate of safeguarding the health of Nigerians.

“We need staff, we also need vehicles, and not too long ago, we got approval for 15 vehicles; but that is a drop in the bucket because we have 36 states.

“For instance, we cannot say we are giving one vehicle to Abia State.
“What will one vehicle do when you are pursuing people that want to kill Nigerians with bad medicine; so we are praying, hoping and planning to buy more in 2020,” She said.

The NAFDAC boss explained that some of the vehicles purchased were from the Agency’s savings, adding that the agency was fiscally responsible, and was saving money to buy what it needed to curtail wasteful spending.

Adeyeye said, “That is what budgeting means, denying yourself a little comfort so that you will be able to buy the essentials, and that is what we are doing and the Federal Government has given the approval.

“Apart from members of staff and vehicles, we need equipment. You do not use litmus paper to test drugs or food.

“No! We need sophisticated equipment and one particular equipment is about N200 million, just one piece of equipment.”