The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, yesterday said it will arrest and prosecute a Nigerian Professor of Ophthalmology at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, for what it described as unverified cure claim for Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, using native vegetable, Ewedu.
Meanwhile, the Agency has quarantined over 104 brands of sanitisers even as it arrested three Nigerian businessmen for alleged importation of expired hand sanitizers and fake Ebola test kits into the country. Making these revelations in Lagos, the Director General of NAFDAC, Dr. Paul Orhii said the various pronouncements by some medical and pharmaceutical professors at these precarious times in the history of the country were more dangerous.
Orhii, who lamented the psychological trauma Nigerians have gone through in the last couple of weeks warned that the case of the professor at LUTH will serve as a serious warning to other Nigerians intending to mislead or cause panic through such bogus claims.
“One consequence of these unsupported and possibly fraudulent claims is that people may be misled into a false sense of invincibility on account of eating Ewedu or bitter kola and drop their guards. This is a national embarrassment and the Agency will not take such uncorroborated claims by supposedly learned people lightly,” he stated.
“These professors should not be patronised by Nigerians. Anybody who claims to have a cure for Ebola should come to NAFDAC, the Ethics Committee or the Treatment Research Group set up by the Federal government than causing more panic in the country.
”NAFDAC will immediately arrest and prosecute any Nigerian making such unverified claims as that could mislead the public.”
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