The National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on Tuesday embarked on the raid of medicine markets at Aba and Umuahia in Abia.
Mrs Abisola Adekoya, the Deputy Director in charge of Port Inspection led the team with “true scan machines’’ to detect such medicines.
Adekoya said that the scan machine was used to ascertain quality of drugs produced and imported into the state, adding that the agency had visited 27 states across the country in the course of the exercise.
“We want to know the quality of drugs in this market. True scan machine is an on-the-spot test machine for drugs and it determines the functionality of the chemicals being put to use.
“When samples are put in the machine, a light shines on the product and when the light shines on the product, that product scatters the light, and when the light is scattered, the emergency light that comes out is called the signature or finger prints of that product.”
Adekoya explained that some specific brand of drugs such as Amala, Fancidar and Maloxin tablets have the same active ingredients, but the finger print that would come on the spectrum on each one differs.
She said that a lot of unregistered fake drugs were mopped up from Ariaria International Market and the drugs were mostly from India and Pakistan.
She said that such included fake Seprin, which has been banned in Nigeria since 2004
The deputy director commended the task force set up at Ariaria International Drug Market to sanitise the market.
Meanwhile, Mr Chukwuka Okorie, the Chairman of Ariaria Drugs Market lauded NAFDAC for the exercise and gave the assurance that the traders would always cooperate with the agency.