POA needs time to meet licensing requirement

Owners of retail and wholesale pharmacies in Ghana will shut their shops and turn away patients if the Pharmacy Council goes ahead to enforce new licensing rules that will require the employment of permanent pharmacists in each pharmacy.

Deadline for compliance issued by the Pharmacy Council expired March 31. More than 60 per cent of pharmacies are still unable to renew their licences due to the stringent requirement of a permanent superintendent pharmacist.

Executive Director of the Pharmacy Owners Association of Ghana, Vincent Owusu-Ansong, speaking to Ekow Mensah-Shalders on the Executive Breakfast Show on Class 91.3fm Friday April 1, said its members will struggle to meet the requirement.

“We don’t have enough people available now to supervise these pharmacies, and, per the council’s regulation, if you are unable to do so by end of April this year, they will close down your shop…and this has very serious implications for NHIS cardholders and even people whose livelihoods depend on these pharmacies,” he stated.

“This is really a challenge. We are seeing if the Pharmacy Council could give an extension to pharmacy owners, so that they can have time to source or recruit pharmacists because now they are not available and it is really causing a whole lot of panic in the industry,” he said.

According to Mr Owusu-Ansong, checks from the regions show that less than 40 per cent of pharmacies have renewed their payment for the year 2016, “and if we don’t get enough pharmacists currently to renew the rest, which is even a challenge now, then by April ending, close to 3,000 shops will go down, and that will not be good for anybody in the country, because pharmacies currently operate between 7am and 10pm, far more than what clinics and even government health centres will do,” he added.