The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has joined an international research consortium awarded a £3.7 million grant by the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council (MRC) to develop technologies for detecting substandard, degraded and falsified vaccines.
The three-year project is being led by the Medicine Quality Research Group (MQR G) at the University of Oxford and involves NAFDAC, Obafemi Awolowo University, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the University of East London and the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Thailand, among other partners.
The initiative will support Nigeria’s post-marketing surveillance of vaccines through the evaluation of new screening technologies, routine laboratory testing and health economics research to assess the cost-effectiveness of different testing methods.
The project builds on the Vaccine Identity Evaluation (VIE) Consortium, which was established during the COVID-19 pandemic to address concerns around substandard and falsified vaccines.
According to NAFDAC, previous research by the Medicine Quality Research Group and its partners demonstrated the potential of advanced scientific techniques to identify degraded and falsified vaccines within supply chains.
The new phase will further develop and assess those technologies before testing their performance under near-real-world conditions in Nigeria.
As Nigeria’s national regulatory authority for food, drugs and other regulated products, NAFDAC will play a central role in implementing the project, with a focus on strengthening vaccine quality surveillance and supporting evidence-based regulatory decisions.
The agency said the research is expected to generate evidence that could support the use of screening technologies capable of verifying vaccine quality across the supply chain.
NAFDAC said the project could contribute to stronger immunisation programmes and improve public confidence in the safety, quality and effectiveness of vaccines.
