Unlike other allied health sciences, the practice of the pharmacy profession enjoyed the full benefits of an early legal framework with the principal objective of “securing in the public interest the highest standards” in the practice.

The Pharmacy and Drug Act 1961 (Act 64) eventually gave way to the Pharmacy Act 1994 (Act 489), which will in turn be supplanted by Health Professions Regulatory Bill, Part 4, once it receives an imprimatur from the executive arm of government.

The pharmacy law is framed to ensure that the Pharmacy Council, the regulatory body, has an oversight of anything concerning medicine dispensing regardless of where that activity occurs. Any health facility where medicines are kept and dispensed must be inspected by the Council periodically without any excuse or whatsoever for sake of pharmaceutical standards adherence and public safety. 

Several years after the passing of the Act 489, the law has been somewhat implemented well but without certain lapses posing as its Achilles heel. The lack of a broad implementation and enforcement of the law in its entirety as observed by most stakeholders has portrayed the Pharmacy Council as sorely selective in discharging its regulatory functions.

Community pharmacies and its practitioners have been overly under the watch of the Council, whereas public pharmacies and even private clinics operating grotty dispensaries have escaped the regulatory net without any measure to arrest this lapse.  Pharmacies in public hospitals and private clinics operate without any licence and are barely detected on the scheduled and routine inspections radar of the Council.

To operate a retail community pharmacy or a wholesale pharmaceutical company, one would have to go through an arduous scourge of bureaucracy with a faint certainty of even obtaining a Pharmacy Council licence for the supply and sale of restricted drugs. At a point, prospective pharmacy owners just have to give up the possibility of operating a pharmacy due to stringent policies the Council has employed in regulating the distribution of pharmacies across the country. Oftentimes applicants encounter inordinate delays in getting their premises approved for pharmaceutical services provision.

Toward the end of this year the Council managed to obtain parliamentary approval for new rates, fees, and charges of licences of pharmacies, pharmacists and licenced chemical sellers. There have been tremendous leaps in these new rates in comparison to the old rates to the astonishment and indignation of many stakeholders. Renewal of a licence for a wholesale/retail pharmacy has seen a rise from three hundred (300) cedis to one thousand (1000) cedis whiles a pharmacist’s practicing licence saw a staggering 200 percent increment—from fifty (50) cedis to one-hundred-and-fifty (150) cedis.

The Council also managed to slip a novel fee termed “Company Operating Licence” to parliament for approval to be paid by community pharmacies and pharmaceutical wholesalers in addition to older licensing obligations.

The regulatory body remains oblivious to the fact that pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies have legal obligation to annually pay some monies to the various district and metropolitan assemblies and the Registrar General’s Department in respect of business operation. The introduction of this unexplained new fee coupled with the monumental rise in old fees place undue fiscal burden on community pharmacies while public hospital pharmacies and private clinic pharmacies illegally operate freely without financial obligation to the Pharmacy Council with regards to licensing.

One of the ways of addressing this seemingly lopsided regulation of pharmacy is for the Council to stretch its regulatory arm on these medical facilities. This could be done through a Legislative Instrument indicating that for such facilities—especially private clinics with a certain number of inpatient beds—that intend to embark on providing pharmaceutical services, the services of a consultant pharmacist must be a prerequisite. Beside the benefits of maintaining pharmaceutical standards, this could serve as a legislative tool to expand the income generating stream of the Council.

Provision of pharmaceutical services occurs in a highly regulated environment. Therefore the current trend whereby public and private medical facilities operate full scale pharmacies without any regulation by the regulatory body is a public safety risk and must be addressed with all the urgency it deserves.