At the beginning of March 2020, the number of sterilizer production factories inside Saudi Arabia was (12) factories that produce approximately (600) thousand liters per week, and within (90) days the number doubled to (94) factories and 7 government agencies produce approximately (460) products with different concentrations.
The number of sterilizers registered with the Authority increased to (118) products, which was positively reflected in the sufficient availability of these products and achieved local sufficiency, especially with the increasing demand for them through the integration of a number of government agencies and the private sector.
This comes as the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) keeps pace with the needs of society through continuous development and improvement of all executive measures and control tasks aimed at ensuring the safety of food, medicine, medical devices, cosmetic products, pesticides, feed, to promote and protect public and community health.
The authority was keen to speed up and shorten the provision of its services related to registration, licenses, import and export permits, and advertising, without prejudice to ensuring safety, effectiveness and efficiency, and succeeded in shortening the period of registration, licensing, classification, import and export permits by (88%).
And by working to raise performance and production efficiency and benefit from electronic services, it succeeded in reducing the period of product registration, as it shortened the period for registering a food product to only two days after it took 35 days in 2018, and cosmetic products from (22) days to one day. , and low-risk medical devices from (11) days to (3) days, and advertisements for drugs and medical devices from (30) days to (5) days.
The authority has prepared many relevant guides, including the temporary guide for technical and standard specifications for sterilizers directed at factories and companies, the guide for extending the validity periods of pharmaceutical products, in addition to the guide to allowing the use of medicines in emergency situations.
