Increase FDA support to boost public health safety!

 Food and drugs, in­cluding cosmetics, have become an integral part of the human life, which means these things must be given the needed attention in terms of their safety in particular.

In today’s world where a good number of people value money over the wellbeing and welfare of others, those man­ufacturing food products and drugs must be monitored in the strictest manner.

This is where the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) comes in.

The country’s FDA has announced the licensing of 10,038 products and 1,900 facilities under its Progressive Licensing Scheme (PLS) intro­duced in 2019.

The PLS is a licensing regime meant to enhance the quality, safety, wholesomeness and effi­cacy of FDA-regulated prod­ucts to promote public health and sustainable growth.

Some of the FDA-regulat­ed products are food, human (allopathic and herbal) and veterinary drugs, biological products, cosmetics, household chemical substances and tobac­co products.

In broader terms, the FDA enforces standards for human (allopathic and herbal) and veterinary drugs, food, biologi­cal products, cosmetics, medical devices, household chemical substances, clinical trials, and the control and use of tobacco products.

The PLS was established to support the government’s industrialisation agenda.

It is worthy of note that the FDA also runs training for both small and large-scale businesses in the food and drug manufac­turing industry.

Companies operating in industries that are regulated by the FDA are in turn required to provide training to their em­ployees for regulated activities such as internal quality manage­ment procedures and all other requirements in their chosen areas.

It is very important that the FDA does not stop at just these but does market surveillance, which The Ghanaian Times considers as very pertinent to its mission of ensuring public health safety.

Surveillance refers to post-product-approval activities and these should include safety monitoring of products and awareness creation amongst consumers to obtain informa­tion on adverse events regard­ing consumption or use of its regulated products.

Unfortunately, there are all the indications that surveillance is not being done as required, but the FDA cannot be blamed for this.

It is on record that the coun­try’s FDA regularly conducts post-marketing surveillance (PMS), but standard PMS is expensive, complex, and time-consuming.

It is, therefore, doing only what it can with its limited resources.

That may mean that the FDA may find the samples of prod­ucts presented to it for registra­tion as good but the manufac­turers or producers can go back and reduce the standards.

When this happens in the drugs sector, for example, it means that people’s health is being compromised.

The Ghanaian Times believes that most of the herbal prod­ucts on the market are not as efficacious as they are claimed to be, hence it encourages the FDA to use its risk-based approach to strictly check these products.

It is said that this approach relies on a streamlined strategy for sampling and testing that yields results for the sampled products at a lower cost.

Public health cannot be com­promised, so The Ghanaian Times appeals to the govern­ment to increase the budget of the FDA to ensure public health safety.