Pharmacist’s Council, SFH partner on improving access to quality of family planning, primary healthcare services, sign MoU

As part of efforts towards improving the quality of family planning and primary healthcare services delivered by Community Pharmacists (CPs) and Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors (PPMVs) in underserved areas of Lagos and Kaduna states, a project of Society for Family Health (SFH) and partners, the IntegratE project has commenced activities in Nigeria.

The IntegratE is co-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MSD for Mothers Foundation.The project will support Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) in the implementation of a tiered accreditation system that will support efficient and quality service delivery at community pharmacists and PPMVs.

As a first step to achieving this goal, the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) and the project, represented by SFH, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Monday January 22, 2017.

The event, which took place at the premises of the PCN in Idu, a suburb of Abuja had the Registrar, PCN, N.A. Elijah Mohammed, and the Managing Director, SFH, Bright Ekweremadu, signing on behalf of their organisations.

The PCN Registrar and the Managing Director of SFH expressed delight at the opportunity to work together towards improving access to contraceptives and quality primary healthcare delivery amongst Community Pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine vendors in Nigeria and specifically in Kaduna and Lagos States.

Mrs. Olaleye and Mrs. Mojisola Aizobu representing PCN and Michael Alagbile, Kenechukwu Eruchalu and Emeka Okafor representing SFH witnessed the event.The PCN is a Federal Government agency charged with the responsibility of regulating and controlling the education, training and practice of pharmacy in all aspects and ramifications, including the regulation of pharmacy technicians and PPMVs in Nigeria.

Over the past few decades, the effectiveness of the Nigerian Health System and healthcare delivery has been sub-optimal. Fragmentation of the health sector, inadequate human resources for health, funding issues and other resources gaps, coupled with weak accountability mechanism have all combined to impact negatively on the quality of health services.

As a result, communities have little confidence in public health services and the use of them is usually very low. Failure of the primary healthcare system has created an overburdening of the private health sector and made more prominent the informal healthcare sector, which includes various providers including PPMVs. This group of health care providers are found are in virtually all street corners in Nigeria and every Nigerian must have at one time or the other accessed services from them. Research shows that community pharmacists and PPMVs provide 15 per cent – 83 per cent of all primary health services for under-fives in Sub-Saharan Africa.