Ministry says 85 City chemists meet standards

(24-11-2008)

Customers buy medicines from the Sai Gon Pharmaceutical Company (Sapharco) in HCM City. — VNA/VNS Photo The Anh

HCM CITY — Around 85 drug stores in HCM City are qualified to meet the new Good Pharmacy Practices (GPP) standard.

This follows an order from the Ministry of Health last year that requires all pharmacies to meet the GPP standard by 2011 in order to remain in operation.

The GPP standard requires pharmacy owners to have a pharmacist’s certificate and a pharmacist always on duty. It further requires that drugs clearly display their origin of manufacture and instructions for storage and use.

Out of the 85 GPP-compliant drug stores, 41 are managed by city hospitals, with the rest being privately-owned.

Recently, the HCM City Department of Health has set a target to get 100 percent of the city’s pharmacies GPP-compliant in 2009. Out of the country’s approximate 3,816 pharmacies, 70 percent are in HCM City.

Pham Khanh Phong Lan, the department’s deputy head, said she was urging public hospitals to be the vanguard in standard compliance, since hospital pharmacies make up 70 percent of the city’s drug market.

Lack of pharmacists

One of the most challenging tasks for drug store owners in complying with the standard is finding qualified pharmacists to staff their stores.

Trinh Nguyen Tuyen, owner of the Thien An Drugstore in Tan Binh District, said that while she could afford to comply with all the GPP’s requirements, she was unable to find a pharmacist.

According to Lan, the city’s medicine branch is facing a great challenge in staffing pharmacies with qualified pharmacists. She attributed this to the fact that 100 per cent of pharmacists open their own pharmacies.

HCM City has around 3,956 pharmacists, at a rate of 4.5 pharmacists per 1,000 people. This is three times higher than the national rate but is still lower than the world’s average. — VNS