All You Need To Know About Ghana’s Newly Launched E-Pharmacy Programme

Health

The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has launched the policy and guidelines for the National E-Pharmacy programme as part of Ghana Government’s ongoing efforts to improve access to and delivery of health care to Ghanaians.

When fully operational in 2022, the E-Pharmacy programme is expected to transform access to pharmaceutical care in the country and make Ghana one of a handful of countries with a national scale e-pharmacy in the world.

Some few years ago, Ghana’s Veep challenged the Pharmacists to explore greater ways of infusing technology into their operations in ways that among others, improves access, efficiency and the availability of medicines across the country, especially in rural and less urban areas.

The challenge, he said, has since been taken up through the leadership of the Pharmacy Council, Pharmaceutical Society and other stakeholders, leading to the creation of the policy and guidelines for the national e-pharmacy.

The Government of Ghana recognizes the gaps in the health infrastructure and is committed to filing as many of the gaps as possible in building the human resources, in the physical infrastructure, and in all the complementary aspects of the health system.

While tackling inadequate infrastructure in the health sector, it is disheartening to see people spend so much time moving from one pharmacy to the other in search of medication.

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Therefore, the innovation in improving pharmacy access to the people through E-Pharmacy can be a game changer in safe-guarding the future of Ghana’s youth. According to Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, this is to ensure rational and responsible access to medicines on a scale they have not yet been able to achieve.

The Vice President said:

“Today, we are adding to the growing list of digitized platforms. E-pharmacy should help us address concerns for the proliferation of fake drugs, because there will be a link to the database of the Food and Drugs Authority to authenticate the approval or otherwise of the medicines on offer; check unlicensed pharmacy operations; reduce disparities in the cost of medicines and tackle some of the major administrative and delivery issues that affect the practice of pharmacy.”

The introduction of this cutting-edge health technology, would help tackle at least 4 critical concerns in the healthcare system: reduce Pharmacist to Patient ratio which is currently five times higher than the ratio recommended by the World Health Organization; improve confidentiality and privacy of patient medical records; minimize wrong self-diagnosis and self medication; and reduce counterfeit and substandard medication.

At its full implementation, the National E-pharmacy platform will enable the public to obtain genuine medicines from accredited pharmacies.

“The global e-pharmacy market is worth about $81 billion today and it is expected to grow to grow to $244 billion by 2027. With the national E-Pharmacy platform, Ghana will be part of this new pharmaceutical digital economy.

Credit: Office of the President,Ghana