03/11/2016
Pharmacy Board concludes a three days consultative meeting on the compliance trends of pharmaceutical businesses to their operational guidelines and regulations
The Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone has concluded a three days sensitization meeting for stakeholders on the compliance trend of pharmaceutical premises to the guidelines and requirements governing the operations of a pharmacy business in Sierra Leone. These meetings were held at the Portuguese Town Church Hall, Benjamin Lane, Freetown from the 12th to the 14th October, 2016.
The representative of the Registrar of the Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone, Pharm. Abdulai Kanu, Head of Enforcement and Narcotics Control Department of the Board informed participants that the meeting was a follow up event to the November 2015 meeting held at the Young Women’s Christian Association Hall which was geared towards discussing mechanisms and proper procedures to combat future disease outbreaks, to analyze lessons learnt from the recent Ebola outbreak and procedures for effective and efficient pharmaceutical service delivery.
Pharm. Kanu reiterated that the Board had started the enforcement of regulatory guidelines that would bring more sanity to the pharmaceutical business sector. He highlighted that such regulatory guidelines were meant to be implemented in January 2016 but due to certain implementation challenges, the Board suspended its implementation to January, 2017. He noted that the Board wanting to go ahead with these regulations conducted a cross sectional compliance trend survey to ascertain the level of compliance of pharmaceutical businesses and to assess the current status in certain key areas of their operations.
Overall Pharm. Kanu noted the survey showed very good compliance for moisture proof floors and walls, accessibility and availability of a sign post for the pharmaceutical outlets. He added that this is a very important parameter because the prevention of moisture accumulation will ensure that medicines are stored as per current good distribution practice. He added that good compliance was also observed for environmental sanitation, toilet facility, availability of sitting couch within the premises, availability of power supply, water supply and documents noting that most premises complied with these requirements. He reiterated that in the area of the availability of dispensary and office space for the professional, most of the premises failed to comply adding that there was also a very poor compliance on the availability of job description and employment contract agreement between the proprietors and pharmacy professionals.
Pharm. Kanu informed participants that all minimum requirements for the operation of a pharmacy business will be implemented in 2017 adding that the Board will also ensure that pharmacy professionals comply with their employment contracts. He reaffirmed that no premises will be allowed to renew its licenses without presenting a service contract between the proprietor and the professional stating that the Board will request the Pharmaceutical Society to provide a template of such contract agreement. He concluded by reiterating that the storage of controlled drugs, i. e. classes A and B drugs must be done in dispensary with a clear separation of cosmetics, baby’s food and other over-the-counter medicines in the premises.
