Chemical sellers attend school

Asamankese E/R), Sept. 28, GNA - This year's national training programme for licensed chemical sellers was launched at Asamankese in the West Akyem District of the Eastern Region on Wednesday by the Pharmacy Council.

About 7,000 chemical sellers throughout the country are expected to benefit from the training and re-training programme with topics such as client handling techniques, prescription reading and licensing of chemical shops and chemical sellers.

Launching the programme, the West Akyem District Chief Executive, Mr Kwabena Sintim-Aboagye, noted that constant training was one of the most important ingredients needed for the successful management of every enterprise, especially for people, who were entering a trade for the first time.

He, therefore, commended the Pharmacy Council for initiating such an elaborate programme to enlighten and upgrade the knowledge and skills of its members, so that they could offer excellent services to their clients.

The DCE acknowledged the valuable role chemical sellers played in the health delivering system to the people, especially the larger rural population, where there were no health facilities, through selling drugs and offering immediate relief for their nagging health problems. He urged the Pharmacy Council to continue to offer regular capacity building programmes to the chemical sellers to update their competence.

The Eastern Regional Officer of the Pharmacy Council, Mr William Ruttmern, said chemical sellers were part of pharmaceutical care providers and to have competent licensed chemical sellers, the procedure for their selection or the granting of licenses among others should be one that would ensure that the practitioners were of a desired calibre to give the highest quality of service.

He observed that the licensed chemical sellers had for a long time provided pharmaceutical care in areas, where there were no health facilities, adding that, even with the establishment of health facilities in those areas, they continued to augment the services that those health facilities provided. Mr Ruttmern reminded licensed chemical sellers that participation in the training programme would be a requirement for the renewal of license for 2007, saying, whatever that was taught during the training programmes, should be practical and impact positively on the lives of the people they served. Sept. 28, 2006