ACPN Protests Buhari’s Refusal To Sign Pharmacists Bill

Edo State chapter of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) on Tuesday ordered its members to lock up their  shops to protest President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to sign into law the Pharmacist Bill already passed by the National Assembly.

Addressing journalists shortly after marching through some major roads in Benin city, Edo State chairman of ACPN, Dr Felix Ndiukwu, said the Pharmacist Bill, if signed into law, would, among other things, be a potent weapon in the fight against drug and substance abuse.

According to him, “It will address the menace of uncoordinated drug distribution and ensure a proper audit trail that can track the movement of drugs from any source to any point in the chain distribution or backwards from any point to the source thereby quickening the trace of injurious medicines in circulation.

“Furthermore, the concept of satellite pharmacists enshrined in the bill will increase access to quality pharmaceutical services as outlets are projected  to expand from 5,000 to 100, 000 to cover the hinterlands.”

“While various organs at different levels of the Pharmacy profession in Nigeria continues to engage government at the Presidency and the National Assembly, community pharmacists raise their voices today over all the red tapes to implore the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari to save Pharmacist Bill from imminent death by the machinations of our collective enemies of progress.

“We implore all men of goodwill to as a matter of urgency prevail on all relevant quarters to ensure that the Pharmacy Bill is signed before the death knell sounds on the 29th of this month and turn our Democracy Day into a day of mourning as the cost of the demise of this bill will be measured in human lives”.

Ndiukwu pointed out that pharmacists all over the years had been lamenting and raising alarm over the menace of drug and substance abuse ravaging the society, the chaotic drug distribution system giving rise to the infiltration of fake and substandard medications in the country.

He also stressed that the action had been responsible to the poor access to quality pharmaceutical care in Nigeria.

source:Independent