By Sola Ogundipe

ELIMINATION of fake drugs and standardization of the pharmacy practice are among the main priorities of the newly repackaged Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, PCN,

Registrar of the PCN, Pharm. Elijah Mohammed, who gave insight into ongoing efforts to kick start improved pharmacy practice in the country, remarked that the system is faced with moral and ethical crisis arising from decades of neglect, disobedience and passivity by many which have produced a culture of pharmacy practice that lacks self-actualization, control and the true commitment to the ethics of the profession.

Mohammed, in a chat with Good Health weekly, stated: “The system is bedeviled by landmark legislation and executive recklessness, a situation that has assumed illegality on demand and removed the essence of pharmacy practice from the public arena”.

Elijah Mohammed

Elijah likened the present system to the Nollywood industry with all shades of actors acting various scripts to suit a hodgepodge of producers and directors alike.

The pharmacy practice, he explained, has long suffered from a “generational gap with little genuine appreciation, understanding and co-operation between the older and younger generations of practitioners”.

Mohammed lamented that the pharmacy profession and indeed the nation has watched, mostly in silence, as the voice of reasoning and the laws of the practice have been progressively legislated out of the public arena just as the gladiators worship at the alter of greed, materialism and selfishness to perpetuate the malevolent deeds.

He said his mission was a revolution devoid of violence and destruction but of love, professional sanctification and radical devotion to what is good that can bring the pharmacy community out of the woods.

On the way forward, Mohammed, who spoke with so much emotion and zeal, said the system must create the opportunity for self-transformation through training and re-training, education and mass enlightenment campaign.

That, he said, was the only way to elicit the spirit of self-conviction and embedment of the mentality of “what must we do to be saved, the passion for and to do good for humanity which is the essence of the pharmacy practice”.

On his 4-point agenda for the PCN and pharmacy practice in the country, Mohammed who spoke on the need for synergy said he was set in the bid towards repositioning of the registry for effective services delivery, a mind set for the new business culture of transformation. Others include: institutionalisation of good pharmacy practice in Nigeria. Transformation of career professionals into intellectual practitioners; redesigning, restructuring and strengthening of mandatory continuing professional development programme and appropriate definition and designation of doctor of pharmacy and post-graduate programmes in the scheme of things.

“Under the new partnership for progress initiative, there is the Patient right initiative, (partnering with consumer protection council and creating an IT driven pharmacy regulation with result oriented inspectorate activites in all aspects and ramifications of pharmacy practice in Nigeria.

Promoting the use of pharmacy emblem as a symbol of professional service as well as a research and development initiative are also in the works, he concluded.