COMMUNITY pharmacists have urged the Federal Government to ban operators of open drug market to check the problem of fake and substandard drugs in the country.

The pharmacists, under the aegis of Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN), said taking such drastic action against illegal markets and quackery would avail a conducive environment for licensed professional and enhance health security.

Chairman of the ACPN, Lagos branch, Biola Paul-Ozieh, at the commemoration of World Pharmacists Day 2015 in Lagos, said that the illegal operators were still a major impediment to activities of community pharmacists that are most central to health care delivery in the country.

Paul-Ozieh explained that though the pharmaceutical sector has come a long way with giant leaps too, but the challenges linger.

According to her, “One aberration in our system is that we still have open drug market all over and that is promoting counterfeiting, faking and dumping of foreign products,” she said.

Continuing, she said: “That is why we are calling on the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to make the practice-environment suitable for the pharmacists to practice in Nigeria. When we don’t have open drug markets again, when people know where they can collect their drugs from registered places, when drugs are used as drugs, when they are distributed as medical products and handed over by the health professionals, then our health outcomes will improve.”

The ACPN chairman added that regulatory agencies like the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) and National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) should also rise up to the occasion, to curtail all the open drug markets nationwide.

On the theme of the World Pharmacists Day, tagged: “Pharmacists: Your partners in health”, Paul-Ozieh said it was an opportunity to harp that the pharmacists are partners to other health professionals, patients and the public, when it comes to rendering health services.