2025 licensing of pharmacies kicks off amid crackdown on unlawful sellers – Folks Every day
The Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) has introduced a nationwide renewal of licenses for 2025 amid a crackdown on unlicensed wholesale drug sellers within the nation.
The Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya famous in a press release on Friday, November 1, 2024, that licensed pharmacies ought to guarantee compliance with the requirements.
“The Pharmacy and Poisons Board is reminding all pharmacists that the licensing portal will be open for renewal of 2025 licenses beginning today (November 1, 2024),” the assertion learn.
The registration drive comes amid an intense crackdown on unlawful wholesalers of medication and the provision chain programs in Level Four hospitals.
The drive which began on October 13 and unfold by October 20, 2024, sought to determine the distribution and dealing with of medication in well being services.
The crackdown additionally prolonged to pharmacies, the place the workers employed had been cross-checked towards the pharmacy and poisons board register.
Cold-chain drug dealing with
Also, the enforcement officers checked the assorted methods through which cold-chain medicine had been dealt with in addition to compliance points within the disposing of drugs to evolve with the NEMA and trade necessities.
Other points which the audits search to determine had been the unauthorised relocation of wholesalers, theft of government-supplied medicine and unlawful practices that undermine the integrity of healthcare.
Similarly, the checks contemplate batching processes, deviations in merchandise, and shopper historical past of complaints and responses.
On Wednesday, October 30, 2024, PPB’s Head of Good Distribution Practices Julius Kaluai stated their groups could be out to crack down on all chemists and wholesalers working exterior of the regulation.
Drug resistance
“Such wholesalers will be profiled and also prosecuted. We are using our inspectors to crack down on illegal chemists and will be able to trace the suppliers through invoices,” Kaluai stated.
Kaluai additionally placed on discover pharmacists who depart unlicensed individuals of their services and solely seem when enforcement groups arrive for inspection.
He famous that such practices put the lives of Kenyans in peril and wouldn’t be tolerated in the course of the audit.
“If these people are denied access to medicines because they lack proper licensing, we can put an end to the problem. We have sampled some wholesalers in the country and are dealing with them firmly,” he added.
PPB raised alarm at a pattern through which a big variety of sufferers registered drug resistance to a few of the antibiotics, antifungals and different antimicrobial medicine.
“If left unchecked, antimicrobial resistance has the potential to reverse decades of medical progress, leaving us vulnerable to infections that were once easily treatable,” PPB CEO Fred Siyoi stated in October 2024.
