Give us three years to get full-time pharmacists – Pharmacy Owners Assoc.

The Pharmacy Owners Association of Ghana wants the Pharmacy Council to stay the implementation of a law that enjoins them to get full-time pharmacists to better help manage and dispense drugs to the public from the shops.

Pharmacy retail and wholesale outlets in the country risk closure by the Pharmacy Council by the end of the month.

This follows an enforcement of the Pharmacy Council rules on the renewal of operational permits for pharmacies, which bars any pharmacist who is fully employed in a pharmacy outlet to work in another pharmacy shop on a part-time basis.

The directive requires all pharmacy owners to renew their operating permits yearly by submitting renewal forms to the Pharmacy Council, endorsed by a pharmacist who accepts to be the Superintendent Pharmacist for that facility for the year in question.

But the association has rather impressed upon the council to review the regulation, saying such a law will be tenable in three years time within which the shop owners believe there will be a relatively large number of the pharmacists churned out into the system to engage them.

“The few pharmacists we have in the system are not available to us the shop owners. Almost all of them have been absorbed by the government, private clinics while others are medical reps in some facilities, and it's difficult to get them work full-time in our shops,” Executive Director, Pharmacy Owners Association, Vincent Owusu Ansong told private radio Accra FM.

He said although the association is not in contention with the regulation, they could only accommodate part-time pharmacists for now since the system does not favour them for such a law to be applied vis a vis the few number of pharmacists in the country.

“We are very prepared to pay the money to get pharmacists in our shops, but the fact is they’re very scanty now, and should the council disregard our plea and close down our shops, the system will suffer to a large extent.”