FORT PORTAL-The National Drug Authority [NDA] and Tooro Kingdom have joined hands to create awareness about the safe use of drugs by those living in the kingdom.
The NDA chairperson, Dr. Medard Bitekyerezo said the collaboration with Tooro Kingdom falls in the agency’s strategic plan 2020/2021-2014/2025 which among other objectives, calls for the increased stakeholder engagement to support NDA regulations.
Bitekyerezo was speaking during NDA engagement with Tooro Kingdom on Wednesday at Mucwa Kingdom Parliament.
He was excited that a memorandum of understanding [MoU] signed between the two sides will help the people in Tooro and the country at large to have access to safe and quality medicine.
He said the MOU would help the two institutions to promote safe drug use and eliminate self-medication and collaborate in activities aimed at prevention of drug and substance abuse, hawking of drugs, and associated risks.
“We are committed to supporting Tooro Kingdom administration in improving the quality of herbal medicines through training, access to current good manufacturing practices, and assisting herbal drug manufacturers…in having notified products on the market,” Bitekyerezo added.
He added that Tooro Kingdom is home to many herbs most of which have medicinal properties and need to be preserved.
“In Tooro, there are so many herbs which are medicinal and are not harmful but need to be preserved. If it needs NDA to put in money to preserve these plants, we are willing to do so,” Bitekyerezo said.
He said: “NDA is aiming at ensuring that we preserve the people of Tooro by ensuring they protect the drugs they consume.”
He however said many young people and adults are consuming a variety of drugs like marijuana, which end up affecting their brains.
“Abusing drugs is very harmful to people although some people are aware of it while others are ignorant. Tooro Kingdom as an institution has a very big voice in spreading the gospel to stop the consumption of harmful drugs because they cause organ failures,” he said.
He warned young people and pregnant mothers to desist from consuming excess alcohol, saying it affects the health of the unborn children.
The Prime Minister of Tooro Kingdom, Steven Kiyingi said as a cultural institution, they need to partner with government to take full advantage of natural resources.
“As Tooro Kingdom, partnering with NDA is a golden opportunity for us to utilise what we have. For example, we have medicinal herbs but they are being misused and we hope NDA will help us put them to use and have more in the region,” he said.
Kiyingi promised to work with other Kingdom officials in mobilising all herbalists to work with NDA to improve their medicines.
NDA donated furniture worth Shs 10 million to Tooro Kingdom and 100 medicinal tree seedlings as start-up and encouraged the kingdom’s officials to ensure they plant more.
The NDA official revealed that they are soon opening a new laboratory that will help with testing of herbal medicine samples.
Currently, herbal medicines are tested at the government’s chemotherapeutics laboratory but over the years, some of the traditional medicine makers have been accused of not presenting their medicines to be tested and formalised before they can put them on market.
https://thecooperator.news/nda-closes-health-clinics-as-drugs-worth-shs-150mln-are-impounded/
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