The World Health Organisation (WHO) India office has published a Good Pharmacy Practices (GPP) training manual to assist the community pharmacists in the country to adopt modern day pharmacy practices to improve their profession.
The document, published a few months ago and now made available in the WHO India website, is an outcome of a project - 'Training of Retail Pharmacists on Drug Management to Promote Rational Use of Drugs for GPP" undertaken by the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA) in November 2004, in collaboration with the WHO India Country Office & the Central Drugs Control Standards Organisation (CDSCO).
As Pharmabiz reported, the IPA conventions held recently in Pune and Coimbatore had discussed the need for implementing the GPP training manual released by IPA, during November last year. IPA is conducting about 20 programmes in various metros of the country to educate the community pharmacists on GPP guidelines and the training manual.
The manual has six modules - regulatory affairs, procurement and inventory management, storage and stock management, dispensing, patient information module and rational use of medicines, elaborated in simple terms, along with examples and activities, and explanations on how one can follow/implement GPP in the different aspects of working in a community pharmacy. The manual also has SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) explaining the need and the concept of SOPs in a community pharmacy, along with some Reference SOPs, a glossary of various terms used in the modules, and annexures on GPP guidelines of FIP, WHO's Essential Medicines List 2005 and Code of Ethics.
The guidelines suggest of activities associated with the promotion of good health, of the avoidance of ill health and the achievement of health objectives, activities associated with the supply and the use of medicines and of items for the administration of medicines or for other aspects of treatment, activities associated with self care, including advice about & where appropriate, the supply of a medicine or other treatment for symptoms of ailments that tend themselves to self-treatment and activities associated with influencing the prescribing and use of medicines.
WHO India Sources informed that the guidelines are recommended as a set of professional goals in the interest of the patients or customers in the pharmacy. The FIP (International Pharmaceutical Federation) in 1993 adopted these international guidelines for GPP. These guidelines were developed as a reference to be used by national pharmaceutical organisations, governments, and international pharmaceutical organizations to set up nationally accepted standards of Good Pharmacy Practice. The WHO Technical committee has made similar recommendations, based on the FIP's GPP guidelines. Many developed countries like USA, Canada, Denmark, Australia, and UK etc already have their GPP guidelines in place, and which are being implemented. Taking cue from this, the IPA (Indian Pharmaceutical Association), in March 2002, had devised & published an Indianized guidelines for GPP.