To ensure that dispensing of medicines in the community pharmacies in the rural areas are done by registered pharmacists, the state pharmacy council of Gujarat (GSPC) has initiated programmes for compulsory registration of certificates of qualified pharmacists belong to all the villages in the state.
As part of this, GSPC has started ‘Compulsory Registration Camps’ in the rural areas of all the districts.
In a chat with Pharmabiz on the sidelines of the Pharma Tech Expo 2016, Montu M Patel, the president of GSPC said the council has conducted 10 compulsory registration camps in the villages of Rajkot, Baroda and Surat districts within the last 12 months period. The programme will continue in next one more year and all the districts will be covered within that time.
Justifying the stand of the council in going to the villages to meet the pharmacists for their certificate registrations, Montu said the pass-out students of B Pharm and D Pharm do not generally come to the Council office in Ahmedabad for registration unless an urgent need arises. In addition to this, coming to the office from far off villages is expensive and difficult for them. The Council is becoming pharmacist-friendly and its activities are made transparent.
Responding to a query, Montu said though on-line registration system has been introduced, the rural pharmacists do not and cannot access the facility.
Explaining the ‘continuous pharmacy education’ (CPE) programme of GSPC, he said presently the Council is giving weight to the Pharmacy Practice Regulations 2015 introduced by the PCI as a subject in all the training programmes. He expressed the hope that the government of Gujarat will shortly implement the Regulations in the state, for which pharmacy council is pressurising the government.
But, the president of the GSPC has differed with the idea of appointing pharmacy inspectors to enforce the Pharmacy Act. Favouring the interest of the drug control officers, he said that the Council did not want to appoint pharmacy inspectors. He is of opinion that if pharmacy inspectors are appointed, it will affect the work of the regulatory officials. Checking the functioning of pharmacies and dispensing of medicines are properly done by the drug control officers, so there is no need of pharmacy inspectors, he told Pharmabiz.
When asked about the implementation of Pharmacy Act, the president, the youngest president of all the state pharmacy councils in the country, has opined that the clause of pharmacy inspectors in the Act needed to be removed by an amendment. Montu became the president of GSPC last year through nomination from government side. He completed his M Pharm programme in 2015.
Recently, GSPC has started job fairs for the unemployed pharmacists in all the district headquarters by inviting HR managers of various pharma companies and business firms. Gujarat has a total of 62,000 registered pharmacists, Montu added.