Pharmacies form association, to work with govt
MBABANE – Pharmacy owners have formed an association that will help them cooperate with government and other partners in their course of service delivery.
The formation of the association comes after Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi indicated that during their monitoring of the operation of pharmacies, they discovered that the Pharmacy Act No.38 of 1929 had loopholes and required to be amended. She said this in Parliament during the debate of her ministry’s budget.
Nkosi said if the Pharmacy Bill had been passed into law, 39 offenders found breaking the existing but old legislation would have been taken to court.
She further said the E500 fines stipulated in the current legislation were not adequate to discourage bad practices.
She said it was, therefore, important that once the Bill becomes an Act, a section to deal with stiffer fines be introduced for repeat offenders.
“We just hope that such an issue will be resolved as soon as possible by ensuring that all the culprits are taken to court for breaking the law,” said Minister Nkosi.
Appreciate
Pharmacy Association Public Relations Officer (PRO) Bhekani Rambo Maziya said pharmacies want to comply with all the legislations, but would appreciate if government introduced categories based on the qualification required for pharmacies.
He said some pharmacies could require just a diploma for the tasks involved, while this may not be the case in other instances.
This, he said, was the reason for their calls for government to introduce categories.
“Government must come up with category A, B and C regarding the purchasing of drugs or material, which is supposed to be sold in pharmacies as well as those that could only be supplied by government in health facilities,” said Maziya.
The pharmacist lamented government’s tendency to have them arrested the whole day and further confiscating their whole pharmacy stock, which is not supposed to be sold by pharmacies.
“We are surprised that government does not want us to even sell mayogel in our pharmacies. Some shops do sell this product, although, I cannot disclose their names for now. Why is government forbidding us to sell such products, yet in some shops it is sold over the counter?” he asked.
He said government was in the practise of confiscating the entire stock despite that the products had been purchased on credit. Further, he lamented that they were being fined at the end of the day.
Option
“We asked for an option to pay a fine, while the stock is returned to the owner. There are so many other things where we usually do not see eye to eye with government, and they need to be corrected,” he said.
He expressed confidence that the formation of the association would help in exposing all those people operating pharmacies illegally in the country. He said they would also assist government by identifying the pharmacies selling health equipment in briefcases, but stipulating charges for their offences.
He pleaded with government to assist them come up with a Board to oversee their operations. He said government needed to do this in order to assess anyone who has applied to run a pharmacy. He said this would help government to monitor the environment and the kind of products that needed to be sold by that particular applicant.
He then criticised government for promoting foreign owned pharmacies at the expense of emaSwati.
Maziya indicated that running a pharmacy was expensive when compared to the income derived from the business. He said on top of that, a hired pharmacist was supposed to be paid around E18 000 per month, which he said was expensive.
Allowances
“We are supposed to pay housing allowances for these pharmacists as well as car allowances. There are certain drugs which are easy to sell and government must give us the go-ahead to sell them,” he said.
Currently, Maziya said government was contradicting itself by not allowing them to sell some drugs but also prescribing patients in hospitals to buy them in pharmacies. These were medication such as scopex. He said they were forbidden as pharmacies to sell such drugs.
“Government wants people to die for not having access to scopex. Where will they get it if pharmacies are forbidden to sell them, yet they are in short supply in health facilities? Government does not care about emaSwati. We need to come up with an agreement to save lives,” said the Pharmacy Association PRO.
Indicated
He indicated that some civil servants-owned pharmacies in the country. He pleaded with those pharmacy owners to avail themselves to the association for the sake of cooperation.
“These people have pharmacies and we all know that. We want to them to come to our meetings so that we can get to know each other and come up with strategies in dealing with various issues,” he said.
Adding, Maziya said they had discovered that government was not checking pharmacies situated in remote areas but was focused on those in urban areas. He said a majority of pharmacies were located in rural areas and were also not complying with the law. He said those pharmacies running businesses illegally in rural areas always went unpunished by government.
Meanwhile, he said there would a be sticker given to any pharmacy that was part of the association to ensure that they do comply with the law. He further said there were already those that had started running away from being part of the association because they knew that they were not complying to the law.
He said government must not be harsh when dealing with the issue at hand by first engaging police officers on how they raid businesses.
As a way forward, Malaza said the association will be holding meeting this coming today at CasemonatyManzini at 10am to discuss where they are supposed to get pharmacy stock and how it should be protected.
He also said on that meeting, they would deliberate on the staff that is supposed to be hired and how that hiring process should be done.
Planning
He said they were planning to meet Minister Nkosi and further state their concerns to parliamentarians.
Director of Health Services, Dr Velephi Okello said the pharmacies should contact the relevant office in the ministry.
She was responding to the association’s allegations that the ministry had stopped them from selling certain medication like scopex and mayogel.
She said some of the medication were confiscated due to failure by the pharmacies to prove the presence of a qualified pharmacist as some drugs were only allowed when there was a pharmacist within the store.
She said this was explained to the pharmacies during the inspections.
“Those affected need to contact the Ministry of Health,” said Dr Okello.
Regarding the issue of some health workers running pharmacies, the director of Health Services said they should be reported to ministry with proof of the allegations. In the event such was true, she said it constituted a conflict of interest. She further said the ministry was requesting those in the field of providing health services to comply with the laws to avoid inconvenience.
“We expect health workers to be well-trained and to know about compliance issues. This is meant to protect the population from harm caused by malpractice,” said the director of Health Services.