The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has warned Nigerians against continuous use of bleaching creams, saying it poses an enormous danger to human health.
The NAFDAC Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, gave the warning while speaking at the Media Sensitisation Workshop on the Dangers of Bleaching Creams and Regulatory Control in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Friday.
According to Adeyeye, some of the harmful effects of bleaching creams include cancer, damage to vital organs of the body, skin irritation and allergy, skin burns and rashes, wrinkles, premature skin ageing, and prolonged healing of wounds.
She said NAFDAC organised the sensitisation workshop for the health journalists in different zones of Nigeria, in which the South-West edition in Ibadan was the fourth in Nigeria.
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“NAFDAC will continue to recognise the partnership, involvement, and important roles of journalists in taking message of the dangers in the continuous use of bleaching creams to the grassroots through their various platforms,” she said.
Adeyeye added that NAFDAC has been carrying out a lot of raids on manufacturers, stores, and the bleaching cosmetics products retail outlets in fulfillment of its mandate of safeguarding the health of the nation.
The NAFDAC boss said the agency would heighten surveillance on the Spas in the country and raise sensitisation campaign on the dangers in continuous use of the bleaching creams.
“We discovered that many operators of the Spas lack knowledge that mixing up different ingredients, either organic or inorganic to form cosmetics can result to bad effect on the users.
“Nigerian should always know that black is beautiful and they do not need to bleach their skin to please anyone,” Adeyeye added.
On her part, the Director, South-West Zone of NAFDAC, Roseline Ajayi, stressed the need for NAFDAC to build capacity and strengthen Cosmetovigilance, a concept of safety monitoring of cosmetics products.
According to her, this refers to the post-marketing surveillance of undesirable effects of cosmetics products.
Ajayi added that the growing adoption of cosmetics products in developed and developing countries would primarily drive the global market growth of the products.
“The risk associated with cosmetics products has elevated the need for cosmetovigilance services,” she said.
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