Spotlight: NDA cautions public against buying drugs from hawkers, unlicensed outlets

The National Drug Authority (NDA) has vowed to increase operations against unscrupulous people taking advantage of the population and selling substandard drugs on the market.

The remarks were made during Spotlight Show on NBS television on Monday this week under the topic: “The National Drug Authority; the mandate, achievements, challenges and plans."

NDA is a government agency responsible for ensuring that medicines are of good quality, work well, and are safe and it is established to protect and promote human and animal health by regulating drugs and healthcare products.

Speaking during the show, the NDA manager in the central region, Dr. Muhammad Idris Lukwago, cautioned the public against buying drugs from the hawkers, adding that the most important thing about medicines is safety and it is the first thing they look for before they recommend any drug for usage in humans.

Lukwago said that they look at the entire value chain of medicines and also oversee all the processes right from manufacturing.

"We set standards and make them easy to understand so that everyone does their role well. Don’t buy medicines from people who are selling in buses because medicines are supposed to be sold in gazetted places that have a license from the National Drug Authority," he cautioned

Abiaz Rwamwiri, the public relations officer at the authority, said the public has been looking at them as the policing agency that comes to close the drug outlets and yet their work goes beyond whipping.

"A drug is a very critical product and if it is not safe from the entire supply chain, it risks the lives of Ugandans and that is why even when we issue a license to someone to run a drug outlet, we want to make sure that you follow the guidelines put in place," he said.

He explained that their mandate is to ensure that the drugs being sold in the drug outlets are registered and approved by the authority.

"When you see us coming in, we are not against the business of your relatives, we are actually trying to protect the population. We make sure that the environment where these drugs are kept is conducive," he said.

Dr. Helen Byomire, the director of Product Safety at the authority,said after the drugs have spent some time on the market, they pick samples and test them in our laboratory to ensure they are up to standard.