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 claiming that native vegetable, commonly known as
Ewedu could cure Ebola.
For now, the Agency has
quarantined over 104 brands of sanitizers even as it arrested three Nigerian
businessmen for allegedly importing expired hand sanitizers and fake Ebola test
kits into the country.
He bemoaned the psychological
trauma Nigerians have gone through in the last couple of weeks and added that
the case of the professor at LUTH will serve as a serious deterrent to other
Nigerians intending to mislead or cause panic through such false 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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