A coalition of pharmacists against professional drug peddling?

In the community where my retail pharmacy is located a colleague pharmacist is sponsoring the OTCMS shops around to fiercely compete with me. What is his modus operandi? He moves about with his van from his own business territory, and entering my territory hops from one OTCMS shop to another, to supply them with not only Class C medicines but also the Class A and B groups according to the requirements of those shops.

 

He calls this activity a smart business move enabling him to extend the boundaries of his business territory, I call it professional drug peddling and everything but ingenious. For the benefit of this discussion let's explain "professional drug peddling" as the practice of a licensed wholesale or retail pharmacy carrying bulk  stocks of medicines from the registered premises on an itinerant journey and selling these stocks in portions to other pharmaceutical facilities en route, usually covering long distances and many days in trekking.

Direct end-to-end delivery of stocks from a wholesale premises to a retail or dispensing facility is excluded from the scope of this definition.

 

Our usage of the qualification of "professional" is not intended to imply quality of performance but, rather, the fact that such activities are done by the direct instructions or under the supervision of pharmacists.

 

Professional drug peddling, which is both an illegality in Ghana and an affront to sound ethical principles of pharmacy practice, is gradually establishing itself as a normal practice in this country and I am not the only victim of its consequences. A full analysis of the ripple effects of professional drug peddling in this country will require a broad-based enquiry beyond the strengths of this rather short discussion, but we do not have to develop an academic thesis for anyone to comprehend that professional drug peddling is the direct cause how OTCMS shops can access Class A and B medicines. When a wholesale pharmacy sends out a trekking mission to the field with a part of its stocks, it must of necessity make sales on the field and not waste fuel. Faced with a dilemma between survival and ethics, the choice naturally would go in the way of the former option. Ethics will always be slaughtered on the alters of survival instincts.

 

By law a pharmacy is a fixed premises, never a movable structure. The laws in Ghana give practical significance to this assertion by providing for the registration of pharmacies or other premises for the dispensing of medicines separately from the licensure of the practitioners who work in these premises. Itinerant vans of licensed wholesale pharmacies in effect move the premises of those wholesale/retail pharmacies in part from the recognized location to other territories. This practice contravenes existing regulations of pharmaceutical practice, perhaps only giving an exception for direct end-to-end delivery of stocks from a wholesale premises to a retail/dispensing facility in response to a concluded transaction for being of a different business model. So to reiterate, professional drug peddling is unlawful in Ghana, at least as of the present time, and hence any pharmacy or a pharmacist who perpetrates it commits an illegality.

 

From the point of view of ethics pardon me to ask if we as pharmacists are ever mindful of the effects our deeds and misdeeds, actions and inactions, have on our profession and colleague pharmacists at large. In the present scenario, professional drug peddling adversely affects the standards of pharmacy practice and nurtures an unfavourable environment which makes it extremely difficult for other pharmacies to thrive, with pharmacies in the small districts and rural areas hit the hardest.

 

When once in a discussion with a senior officer of the Pharmacy Council around this subject matter I asked why the regulator has not been successful in curtailing this phenomenon, his answer pierced me to the core. He in turn asked me of what cadre of professionals the supervising practitioners of wholesale pharmacies are which do send out vans on trekking. At the end of the discussion I couldn't help but agree with him that our predicament is one of in-fighting. Just a handful, in relative terms, of pharmacists are by this means fighting against the larger body of pharmacists and also making the work of the regulator more difficult. He was quite point-blank, that many of the challenges Pharmacy Council is grappling with were caused by one pharmacist or the other, only for the bigger fold to turn back with criticisms that the Council is not doing much for our profession.

 

So, how about resorting to the approach of self-regulation in an attempt to exterminate the fledgling phenomenon of professional drug peddling in this country?  A prompt action is necessary before this phenomenon gets fixed in the minds of current and future generations of Ghanaian pharmacists as both acceptable and lawful.

In the considered opinion of this writer, no other instrumentality could be superior to self-discipline at controlling misdemeanour.

 

In our context "self" refers to the PSGH and the entire body of pharmacists. This is a call to reactivate the erstwhile committee of the PSGH charged with self-regulation of members of the professional body, as well as the pharmaceutical environment, to deliver on its mandate.

 

As a second step the writer recommends the formation of a coalition of pharmacists to volunteer information and field evidence to support the work of the aforesaid committee. These volunteers scattered across the length and breadth of this country, keeping watchful eyes for professional drug peddlers from their community pharmacies as sentry posts, could report with the timely information and evidence to facilitate the work of that committee and the Pharmacy Council.

 

Possibly, such an advocacy group of pharmacists will be a game-changer for pharmacy practice in our dear country.