Vision:
To be the leading regional regulatory authority for drugs, with professional excellence and services that contribute to the protection and advancement of public health. We aim to provide our services in a professional manner that will increase the level of protection and improvement of public health in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Mission:
Assuring the safety, quality and efficacy of medications and assuring the safety of cosmetics is our goal, to achieve this goal we intend to build an efficient and none compromising regulator body.

Why must medications be regulated?
The use of ineffective, poor quality and harmful medications that have no or little proven efficacy can result in therapeutic failure and reoccurrence or progression of diseases and in sever cases may lead to death. It also undermines confidence in the health system, health professionals, pharmaceutical manufactures and distributors. Therefore, it's mandatory to establish a strong National Drug Authority to ensure that the manufacture, trade and use of medications are regulated effectively in order to protect and promote public health.

Drug sector activities:
The Drug sector has many activities; each activity reinforces the others. These activities aim to promote and protect public health in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Follows are some but not all activities of the Drug Sector:

    • Licensing of the manufacture, import, export, distribution, promotion and advertising of medications; 
    • Assessing the safety, efficacy and quality of medications, and issuing marketing authorization; 
    • Inspecting and surveillance of manufacturers, importers, wholesalers and dispensers of medications; 
    • Controlling and monitoring the quality of medications on the market; 
    • Controlling promotion and advertising of medications; 
    • Monitoring adverse reactions to medications; 
    • Providing independent information on medications to professionals and the public. 
    • Assuring cosmetic products safety.

Development Themes:

First: Writing, reviewing and updating laws, executive roles, guidelines, specifications, and building an efficient system for pharmaceuticals registration and monitoring.

Second: post-marketing surveillance for medication adverse drug reactions and quality.

Third: To provide the public and health professional with trusted impartial information.

To achieve these obligations the Drug Sector has formed a number of committees to update the guidelines and procedures of dug regulation in coordination with the government agencies that have guidelines and procedures of enforcement relative to drug regulation. In addition the Drug Sector has begun hiring qualified pharmacists and support staff to be trained and sent for post graduate studies in order to fine tune their skills and knowledge to effectively discharge their duties at the SFDA. The Drug sector has also been actively seeking specialized consultants to oversee and advice in the rapid buildup and commencement of activities in the Drug Sector of the SFDA.