Starrays
By Moses Agbe -(NASS Abuja).
The Registrar of the Optometrist and Dispensing Opticians Board of Nigeria has thanked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for restoring the funding of regulatory agencies in the health sector while appealing to the National Assembly to ensure that the presidential directive is fully implemented to enable them tackle fake drug manufacturers and practitioners in the country.
Dr Obinna Awiaka observed thus in a media chat with newsmen after a meeting with the House Committee on NAFDAC in National Assembly, Abuja recently.
According to Dr Awiaka:
”We thank Mr President who has restored funding to the regulatory agencies in the health sector but as we speak we still have challenges relating to the implementation of the funding directive and we are appealing to this Committee to help our members to access funding so that we can run our agencies, pay salaries and carry out our regulatory activities.
“And we have a major issue with funding because if we are not well funded, we cannot afford vehicles and so will not be able to go to the different locations to stop quackery especially in the rural areas where there are a lot of quacks and fake drug sellers.
“We need to be able to mobilize our teams to go out there to stop quackery and help Nigerians especially in the area of fake doctors, fake practitioners and fake drugs.”
In the regulatory area, we have been able to shut down a lot of quacks, we have been able to shut down a lot of them in markets; like in the Sabon Gari Market, Kano all the fake drug manufacturers and fake drug sellers have been stopped by the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria.”
The Optometrist Board has also been able to stop a lot of quack doctors who have been moving from market to market to run fake items. A lot of them have been prosecuted while many others are facing the full wrath of the law” – Dr Obinna Awiaka added.
