Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, says the Astrazeneca vaccine recently inaugurated and distributed to states to treat COVID-19 has no side effect.
Adeyeye, who stated this on Thursday in Abuja, shortly after she got vaccinated, said that NAFDAC went through the application dossier of the vaccine before it was approved to be administered on Nigerians for the treatment of COVID-19.
“When we got the dossier or the application package of the vaccine, we went through it line by line, but before we got the application itself, we went through other assessments.
“I am talking about their assessment report so that we are prepared and guided when we start our own and that was exactly what happened.
“We conclude based on quality, safety and efficacy because we have to depend on the report, this particular AstraZeneca vaccine, over 20, 000 people were involved in phase three of the report,’’ she said.
Adeyeye said that the effectiveness of AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the risk, as it has already been scrutinised.
She noted that there was no medicine without its side effect, especially when still going through the developmental stage.
The director-general said that from all indications of quality and efficacy, the benefit of AstraZeneca vaccine outweighs the risk and the side effect.
She said that the agency also believed in herbal medicine, but it must be backed with research before such could be approved.
She added that such herbal medicine must be antiviral to cater for various illnesses.
Adeyeye said that the agency had accommodated 14 of such herbal medicine for listing to ascertain whether it was safe to use it.
She said that the agency must also do its own clinical trials before any herbal medicine would be approved.
She disclosed that the Federal Government had arranged for a research and development scheme for the health sector, adding that, a lot of herbal medicine were going to be used for the testing.
-Punch (ng)