FDA will not compromise on standards - CEO

The Chief Executive Officer of Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Dr Stephen Opuni, on Tuesday said the Authority would not compromise on quality standards to jeopardize the health of Ghanaians.

Speaking at the “Meet the Press” series, which focused on the health sector, the FDA boss said counterfeiting of medicines has become a major health threat and should not be encouraged, describing it as criminal.

Reacting to questions on the recent incident involving Tobinco Pharmaceuticals, a local importer and the manufacturer Bliss GVS Pharmaceuticals Limited, he explained that the importation of Gsunate Plus Suppository was a fake anti-malarial and was very harmful to the health of infants.

“We cannot afford to have our infant mortality increase and miss the Millennium Development Goal 4”.

He explained that FDA had found out that the manufacturer, Bliss submitted forged dossiers and documentation and have also refused to submit the necessary documentation required for the re-registration of the few medicinal products that he applied for re-registration.

“The FDA will therefore not proceed to analyse such medicinal products that has no clinical trials study conducted on it,” he added.

Dr Opuni said the FDA had notified the World Health Organisation about the incident and urged the public to assist the FDA by offering information on persons in any practice possible of endangering public health and safety.

The Minister of Health, Ms Sherry Ayittey, answering questions on how to assist local pharmaceutical manufacturing companies to gain roots, said the Ministry had invited a 15-member delegation from the African Union to assist Ghana to draw a road-map on producing Anti retroviral as well as other essential medicines.

The delegation, she said, was already in the country and would be meeting the stakeholders to brainstorm.

On the non payment of junior nurses of Korle-Bu Teaching hospital, who recently embarked on a strike action, the Health Minister noted that some payments have been made and that the Ministry, in collaboration with the hospital, was working to ensure that their back pays were paid.

She said the Ministry would be embarking on an exercise to clean the payroll, adding that, “With the 600 nurses that were said to have not been paid, we had only 250 names when we checked”.

The programme focused on the Ministry of Health and dealt with the three teaching hospitals, Korle-Bu, Tamale and Komfo Anokye.