The SFDA, represented by its drug sector, organizes the second national week of poisoning prevention entitled "Herbal Products are Unsafe" which will last for one week starting from 29-12-1429 to 5-1-1430 that equals 27-12-2008 to 2-1-2009, in the SFDA Riyadh headquarter. The party and the accompanied exhibition will be inaugurated by his Excellency Dr. Mohammed bin Ahmed Alkanhal, the acting vice executive president of the SFDA, who confirmed that such occasions aim to spread educational awareness, draw the attention of citizens to avoid dealing with herbalists whom have no licenses to manufacture drugs, explain the negative manners of people toward medicating with herbs as well as the consequent bad effects and focus on the concept of health safety to family and community.
His Excellency Dr. Saleh bin Abdullah Bawazeer, the vice executive president of drug affairs, stated that the SFDA realizes the importance of health educational campaigns in raising the awareness of people toward health safety; for this reason, it made a study in Riyadh about the reality of herbal products sold in herbalists shops and supplementary healthy food; the field study revealed that some of these products are mixed with chemical drugs or chemical harmful substances while others are mixed with internationally prohibited substances or withdrawn from world drugs markets because of their bad effects on human health beside that some of them contain fake medical reports or can not be checked to mislead the consumers.
From his part, Dr. Abdulmuhsin bin Humaid Alruhaimi, the director of researches and publishing department, explained that this campaign includes several educational means such as: holding educational lectures in number of cities, sending more than million SMS message as well as using 20 electronic screens around the Kingdom, publishing million informative brochures to be sent around 17 city in the Kingdom, transmitting short voice messages through broadcasting stations about the risk of using herbal products and two educational movies lasting three minutes.