Heatwaves threaten drug potency, NAFDAC warns

Director General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye. Source: von.gov.ng

The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, has said the current climate crisis, characterized by unprecedented heatwaves, has posed a severe challenge to maintaining drug potency throughout the supply chain. She stated this during the 3rd anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Medical Research and Training at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Oyo State, on Thursday. The event, themed “Preserving Potency: Navigating Heat Stress in Medicine Distribution and Usage,” was organised in collaboration with the NAFDAC. Adeyeye, who was represented by NAFDAC’s Director of Laboratory Services (Drug), Inkem Ifudu, said, “The primary mandate of the regulatory body remains to safeguard public health by monitoring the distribution, use, importation, and exportation of medications, making the protection of active pharmaceutical ingredients from environmental degradation a front-burner issue for the agency.” ​Delving into the clinical implications of the crisis, NAFDAC DG explained that heat stress behaves as a quiet destroyer of essential medications, leading to massive, unexpected treatment failures across healthcare settings. She pointed out that common, everyday antibiotics like amoxicillin capsules, suspension formulas for children, and the combined amoxicillin-clavulanate are highly sensitive to thermal fluctuations. Adeyeye noted that these compounds begin to degrade swiftly even within ambient laboratory conditions if specialized climate controls are not rigorously maintained. NAFDAC DG said, “The threat becomes even more catastrophic for life-saving cold-chain items like oxytocin, a vital hormone routinely administered to pregnant women during delivery.” She noted that when such temperatures drop outside the manufacturer’s strict parameters due to severe heat, the biologically active elements are completely deactivated, leaving doctors to unknowingly administer redundant treatments while putting vulnerable lives at extreme risk. ​Addressing the structural flaws within the domestic medicine market, NAFDAC Director-General Adeyeye stressed that storage requirements are binding commitments that must be strictly maintained from the production factory down to the last-mile end-user. To combat the unauthorized decay of these chemical formulations, she said, “The agency has deployed its seven specialized laboratories nationwide to perform aggressive, routine post