The guidelines is intended to help the authority Identify legitimate medical products in the supply chain and also Facilitate effective recall of non-conforming products from the market to ensure quality, safe and efficacious medical products were available to the  public.

According to the FDA, the availability of Substandard and Falsified (SF) medical products on the Ghanaian market endangered the health of the general public, hence the need for enhanced traceability.

The Chief Executive Officer of FDA, Dr Delese Mimi Darko said this at the Stakeholder engagement on draft pharmaceutical traceability guidelines held in Accra yesterday.

The two-day engagement was Organised by FDA in partnership with World Health Organization, brought together stakeholders from Ministry of Health , Members of the National Traceability Strategy, Pharmacy Council, Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Chamber of Pharmacy, Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Association of Ghana (PMAG) and Pharmaceutical Importers and Wholesalers Association (PIWA).

She stated that, the implementation of the guidelines would help FDA have visibility and data on medical products intended for the Ghanaian market by authorized manufacturers.

Dr Darko added that, if would aid FDA to Easily track product suspected to be defective along the supply chain and also Gather reliable data to inform policy formulation on medical products.

“The implementation of the pharmaceutical traceability guidelines will enable the FDA to meet these requirements through serialization of the product packaging.

These codes will serve as a unique identifier for each single package of the medical product,” she said.

Despite FDA efforts in combating SF, she noted that the multimillion-dollar business has lured more people into the business causing the resources and effort the authority expended in the fight against SF fruitless.

“No doubt the implementation of traceability of medical products will enable the FDA rid the country off or minimise incidence of SF medical products Ghanaian market,” she said.

To surmount the challenges posed by SF medical products, she appealed to all the stakeholders to support the efforts towards the implementation of track and trace system.

The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of FDA in Charge of Technical Operations Division, Dr Akua Amartey, noted that, the track and trace system would help trace where a particular product was manufactured, it transportation and distribution.

She explained that the track and trace strategy would give unique identification numbers to each products which would aid in identifying this product, the country and facility which manufactured it, and the countries this product passed through and ended up in Ghana.

“So if we have a similar product on the market, that we cannot track and trace where it’s coming from streets, we know that it is a falsified product or it is a substandard product or a product that is not supposed to be in the supply chain,” she added.

BY CECILIA LAGBA YADA AND EMMANUELLA AKIMBI