By Maryanne Awuya
In a major boost to national public health safeguards, NAFDAC has joined a £3.7 million international consortium dedicated to combatting poor-quality and counterfeit vaccines.
The three-year initiative, funded by the UK Medical Research Council’s Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS), brings together world-leading research institutions and regulatory bodies to develop cutting-edge detection technologies for supply chain security.
The project is being led by the Medicine Quality Research Group (MQRG) at the University of Oxford in partnership with NAFDAC, Obafemi Awolowo University, the United Kingdom Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the University of East London, the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Thailand, and other collaborators.
PerSecondNews reports that the initiative, posted on the agency’s website, builds on the Vaccine Identity Evaluation (VIE) Consortium, which was established during the COVID-19 pandemic to tackle the growing global threat posed by substandard and falsified vaccines.
Under the project, Nigeria will strengthen its post-marketing vaccine surveillance through the evaluation of innovative screening technologies, routine vaccine lot-release laboratory testing and health economics studies to determine the cost-effectiveness of different vaccine quality assessment methods.
The new funding expands a key partnership between Oxford University, the STFC Central Laser Facility, UKRI’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and the Medicine Quality Research Group.
The collaboration has already proven that advanced scientific tools can effectively spot degraded and counterfeit vaccines across supply networks.
The agency said the new phase of the research will further refine the technologies before evaluating their performance under near real-world conditions in Nigeria.
As Nigeria’s National Regulatory Authority, NAFDAC will play a central role in implementing the project by strengthening vaccine quality surveillance and supporting evidence-based regulatory decision-making.
The agency noted that the collaboration underscores its commitment to safeguarding public health through science-driven regulation, innovation and international partnerships while reinforcing public confidence in the safety, quality and effectiveness of vaccines.
The project, according to NAFDAC, is expected to generate critical evidence that will support the deployment of screening technologies capable of verifying vaccine quality throughout the supply chain, ultimately strengthening immunisation programmes and boosting public trust in vaccines.
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