With a view to bring in all the pharmacist associations in the country under one roof and to enable them to interact with one another in an efficient manner, a National Conference of Registered Pharmacists’ Organisations (NCRPO) is being planned to be hosted in once in two years, with the first one to kick off in January next year.

The national conference will be in line with the Indian Pharmaceutical Conference (IPC) and it will take the form of a national platform for pharmacists working in all sectors. The initiative for the Conference is taken by the Trichy based Pharmacists’ Awareness Organization (PAO), a forum of registered pharmacists in Tamil Nadu.

The plan of the organizer group, PAO, is to conduct a national level conference once in two years in one of the state capitals. To start with, PAO has decided to host the first meeting either in New Delhi or in Chennai in the first week of January next year. A pre-conventional meeting of the leaders of all organisations will be held in Chennai in September last week.

The major attraction and advantage of the conference is the ‘International Job Fair’ for the unemployed pharmacists and to help the pharma manufacturing and equipment & technology industry to absorb as much talented people from the academic sector as they want. For this, PAO is communicating with the state pharmacy councils and academic institutions in the country. Through this, an industry-academic institution relation will be made for mutual benefits.

Further, the Conference aims to bring in all the associations of the pharmacists working in public and private sectors to a common platform to deliberate on the issues faced by the associations and individual pharmacists, said R. Tamil Venden, founder and CEO of PAO.

“The national conference will offer participant organisations opportunity to examine the current issues in the pharmacy sector, especially in the backdrop of introduction of Pharmacy Practice Regulations (PPR) 2015 in the country. The three days conference will include Job Fairs for national and international opportunities, scientific sessions, interactive programmes, special events and networking programmes designed to help participants establish a rapport among them. The Conference will turn out to be a platform for the national and international pharmacists organisations to discuss their issues extensively”, said Venden.

Associating with the state pharmacy councils, the national conference will mould a strategy to provide awareness to the pharmacists with a view to update the developments in the pharmacy education and practice fields. Subjects like Pharmacy Act, Role of Pharmacy Council, Pharmacy Practice Regulations, Pharmacy Practice in the community level, Hospital Pharmacy, Role of Pharmacy Inspectors, Drugs and Cosmetics Act etc will be discussed in detail in the conference.

According to Tamil Venden, PAO is giving trainings to the members of all pharmacists group. But those who are in service, either in private or public, are not updating new ideas and concepts generating in the pharma sector. The NCRPO will be a knowledge-inspiring event for the registered pharmacists in the country.
 
J Jayaseelan, chairman of the Tamil Nadu state board of the Indian Pharmaceutical Association has welcomed the idea of the organisers to host a national conference of all pharmacists organisations.