Health

DR Solomon Onafowokan, the President of GS1 Nigeria, on Saturday urged health stakeholders to implement visibility and traceability to promote trust in the pharmaceutical sector and health care system.

Onafowokan, who spoke at the inauguration of the GS1 Nigeria Experienced Centre in Lagos, said traceability played a vital role ensuring product in supply chain.

“Many countries in the world have developed their healthcare through visibility and traceability within their supply chain.

“This has helped to discourage the infiltration of substandard and falsified products in their healthcare supply chain.

” In Nigeria, associations must collaborate to build end-to-end visibility and traceability to foster growth in the supply chain.

“It will also provide opportunities for trade of domestically manufactured pharmaceuticals across the regional and continental borders,” he said.

The President said the experience centre was designed to provide a unique and immersive learning experience on on how GS1 standards enable an end-to-end visibility and traceability of products through supply chain.

He said: “The experience centre is an innovative facility that showcases the uniqueness of a global standard.

“The centre demonstrate how GS1 standard on how supply chain process flow and showcases the adoption and operationalisation of GS1 Standard in a clear and practical manner”.

Speaking also, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General  of  National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), said that traceability was key  to protecting drugs and commodities from falsification.

Adeyeye,  who inaugurated the centre, commended GS1 for its efforts, noting that the experience centre would further strengthen pharmacovigilance, of which the agency was promoting.

“Five years ago, 25 countries signed a call to action to use track and trace to ensure that substandard medicine doesn’t get to their supply chain.

“I must commend GS1 for this initiative to promote track and trace is for the protection of commodities from being falsify and that is in line with our agenda to strengthen pharmacovigilance.

“We have also created a traceability information desk and we are grateful to GS1 for training some of our staff.

“With more partnership like this, the issue of drug falsification and substandard would be address,” she said.

NAN reports that some of the solution providers trained by GS1 also gave presentations during the programme. (NAN)

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Tags: Dr Solomon Onafowokan NAFDAC