With a view to safeguard the interests of pharmacists and their role in the healthcare system, Indian Pharmaceuticals Association (IPA) urged the Centre to make some major changes in the draft of the national health policy (NHP). The pharmacist community is disappointed over the way their role has been projected in the draft by failing to properly define the role of the pharmacists in the healthcare system.

The association stressed that in spite of the fact that pharmacists are recognised as the third largest healthcare professional group in the world. With India having over 1 million pharmacists, the government has never thought of tapping their full potential. It is understood that there are around 717 colleges offering D Pharm cource, 968 colleges that offer B Pharm course and 191 colleges offer Pharm D courses in the country.

IPA in their representation to the Centre, pointed out that there are over 6 lakh plus retail pharmacies in the country with a huge footfall, which in most cases act as the first port of call for patients. “Pharmacists are experts in drugs, and can be centres for provision of information and knowledge to the public on various health issues. Thus their mention should be made in the vast health resources in the NHP and how the government can work in tandem with them to provide better health care to patients. Thus, it is imperative to have pharmacist at the table whenever policy makers and planners discuss medicines,” IPA stressed in a letter to the health ministry.

IPA pointed out that since the new generation pharmacists are trained primarily to provide pharmaceutical care services to the patients, it is pertinent to highlight their importance. Pharmacists today are trained to be pro in assisting clinicians in writing evidence based prescription through unbiased drug information; monitor patients for adverse drug reactions and report the same to the national PvPI programme; assist institutional clinical research as coordinators and also inventory control etc.

The association stressed that to boost the role of the these pharmacists the Centre should recognise their efforts. Association pointed out that a lot of pharmacists are conducting research in pharmacy institutions, other laboratories and in pharma industry, which needs to recognised by government. They stressed that there is a need to take measures to include their efforts in the mainstream research in health by providing funds for conducting healthcare research including drug discovery.