By Alex Baah Boadi
Enchi (WN/R), Dec. 04, GNA-The Western North Regional office of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has organised training workshops for herbal medicine practitioners within the Nine districts of the Region.
The training was to among others, encourage unlicensed herbal medicine practitioners in the region to register their products and the procedures to register a product in good manufacturing practices to produce herbal products that would be safe for human consumption.
The training conducted in two phases was held at Wiawso and Enchi and was attended by a total of 137 practitioners.
Mr Albert Ankomah, Regional Director of the Authority in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the training workshop was to train herbal practitioners on the need to manufacture according to FDA laid down procedures.
The participants were educated on how best to source raw material, store raw materials, process raw materials into finished product, keep records and how best to train their staff.
Mr Ankomah,encouraged herbal practitioners who were yet to register their product to do so within the shortest possible time since it was against the public health act to produce herbal medicine without license.
He also advised consumers to buy herbal products only from licensed shops and not buy from community information centers so as to make contact tracing easier.
He indicated that the authority could not guarantee the safety of products that were not registered and cautioned the public not to patronise herbal products which were not registered by the FDA.
Mr Joseph Boateng, Regional Chairman, Traditional Herbalist Association, lauded the FDA for the training, since according to him, it had exposed members to how best to manufacture herbal medicines.
He advised members who have not yet registered their products to register with the FDA.
Some of the participants lauded the FDA for the training and appealed to the Authority to regularly engage them.
GNA