The exercise, which was conducted on a market day, saw officials of the FDA spread across the entire market including shops in the main lorry station in the municipality.

Even though the traders on sighting the FDA officials tried to hide the unregistered products, the officials still fished out the products.

They did not spare traders, who pleaded and shouted, “Please fear God and spare us.”

The unregistered products, some of which had stickers of male sex organs, included herbal products, aphrodisiacs, ointments, hand sanitisers, herbal concoctions, body enhancement and other pharmaceutical products.

The exercise lasted several hours.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) after the exercise, Mr Abel Ndego, the Acting Regional Head of the FDA, reiterated the Authority’s core mandate to ensure the Region remained in regulatory compliance.

“We have been doing our underground work to ensure that we raid the Region to get rid of all forms of unregistered, unwholesome products and anything that has the potential of causing public health threats,” he said.

Mr Ndego said the Authority noticed the infiltration of unregistered and unwholesome products into the Region despite several sensitization programmes for traders over the years on the dangers and penalties for such business.

“We had earlier on done some work on it but noticed that it appears we have a lot of recalcitrants in the system who still find ways of getting these unapproved products through unapproved routes into our Region.

“And as part of our mandate to ensure public health and safety, it is imperative that we undertake exercises like this to ensure that we maintain the safety ratings of our Region and possibly beyond,” Mr Ndego said.

Mr Jiah Jiato Juah, the Regulatory Officer 1 (RO 1) of the FDA, who led the team of officials to conduct the exercise, told the GNA that the Authority, as part of investigations to ascertain how the products entered the Region, visited Senkase, a community in Northern Togo, which shared border with Pulmakom in the Pusiga District where the products were smuggled into the Region.

He disclosed that Ghanaian traders crossed the border to Senkase on Thursdays and Fridays to buy the unregistered products.
He said: “We tried to find out how they bring them. Unfortunately, they don’t pass through the border because we have an officer stationed at the Pulmakom border.

“Our checks revealed that they use unapproved routes with motorbikes through Bawku and Garu.”

Mr Juah added that their checks further revealed that a lot of the products were also found in Dakola, a community in Burkina Faso, and smuggled into the Region through unapproved routes at Paga in the Kassena-Nankana West District.

Mr Juah insisted that per the regulatory law, once the products were not registered, they could not be manufactured, distributed, imported or exported.

“Unfortunately, these products are not registered. Even the pictures on the products are clear that the FDA will never register such products,” he said.

The Regulatory Officer expressed concern that despite the health risks, some members of the public were convinced to buy and use the unregistered products, and admonished residents to be wary of the dangers of such products.

An elderly woman, Madam Rose Akaribire Atindoo, who witnessed and appeared visibly happy with the seizure of the unregistered products by the FDA, commended the officials for the action saying, “I am happy with what the officers are doing.”

She bemoaned the indiscriminate sale and use of unregistered and unprescribed drugs, especially tramadol among the youth saying, “I am old, and it’s sad that the young ones who should take over from us, the older ones, abuse these products, and eventually die prematurely from strange health conditions,” Madam Atindoo said.