Pharmacy Council inducts new members
The Minister of Health, Mr Alex Segbefia, has tasked regulatory bodies to apply all governing mechanisms to stamp out substandard and falsely labelled medicines from the market.
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He said regulatory bodies such as the Pharmacy Council and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) must ensure that bad medicinal products and quack pharmacists who peddled such products were not allowed to circulate or operate at the expense of the lives of the people.
The expectation of the public, he said, was that medicines circulating in the markets were safe, of good quality and efficacious, hence the need to do away with quacks.
Mr Segbefia was delivering the keynote address at the induction ceremony of newly qualified pharmacists in Accra yesterday.
Three hundred and fifty newly qualified and registered pharmacists were inducted into the Pharmacy Council of Ghana at the ceremony.
The pharmacists, who had been trained in the country and abroad, had satisfied all the requirements of the council.
They swore the Apothecary’s Oath to abide by the laws governing the profession and also commit themselves to the welfare of humanity and make the relief of human suffering their primary concern.
The induction ceremony was on the theme: “Consolidating good pharmaceutical care through patient counselling and public education.”
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Pharmacists’ role changing
Mr Segbefia said although patients were exposed to a wide range of information, it was the responsibility of pharmacists to ensure that patients were adequately informed.
He, therefore, urged pharmacists to intensify their education to enlighten the public on substandard medicines, among other health concerns.
Currently, he said, pharmaceutical care was patient-centred, which required pharmacists to work with patients and healthcare providers to promote health, prevent diseases and modify medication use to ensure that drug therapy regimens were safe and effective.
“Increasingly, the pharmacist’s task is to ensure that a patient’s drug therapy is appropriately indicated, the most effective available, the safest possible and convenient for the patient,” he said.
“Update yourself”
The minister urged the pharmacists to continuously update themselves with new and improved ways to accommodate best practices in the rapidly changing world.
He also urged the inductees not to be satisfied with their successes but continue to strive towards greater goals and bring to bear their knowledge and training to improve the lives of the public.
The Registrar of the Pharmacy Council, Mr Joseph Kodjo Nsiah Nyoagbe, urged the inductees to diligently apply the words of the oath as their guiding principle.
He urged the new pharmacists to uphold and show respect to the laws that governed the practice.