About Nafdac Nigeria

The importance of food and drugs to a man and animal is very obvious. They need food in order to grow and sustain life while life goes on, and because of the inherent disposition to illness, the organs of the body

may not always function properly.

These situations of ill health provide the compelling need for drugs in order to modify the functioning of the body and restore it to normal. To be acceptable, the drug must not be deleterious to the body but should rather produce positive effect, which leads to restoration of normal life. In like manner, cosmetics, should have no harmful effect on the body to which they are applied.

It is the duty of all government to protect the health of the citizens, and in Nigeria this is the responsibility of the Federal Ministry of Health. Within the Ministry and until 31st December 1992, these responsibilities as regards foods and drugs devolved on the Department of Food and Drugs Administration and Control, (FDAC) Department and were inevitably linked with the normal bureaucratic ministerial positions which are manifested in:

• Slow mobilization of ideas, men and materials for productive work
• Inadequate resource acquisition, utilization and management
• slow disciplinary and poor reward system, and management
• poor funding of activities necessary for effective design and implementation of programs

They are also traceable to a lack of awareness by the public in practical terms of the sensitivity and relevance of matters concerning control measures on food, drugs, cosmetics, water and chemicals to both preventive and curative health care. Such control measures when executed successfully provide guaranteed savings of a high percentage of the expenditure of the government and individuals to cure and relieve illness.

These problems led to the birth of NAFDAC as a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Health. NAFDAC was thus established by Decree No. 15 of 1993 to carry out among other things, all the control functions of the former FDAC while the service functions remain within the ministry.

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