Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Evaluation of pharmacy practice regulations in Nigeria: The pharmaceutical inspectors perspective

Yejide Olukemi Oseni

Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, South West Zonal Office, Ibadan, Nigeria;

For correspondence:- Email: yejideoseni@yahoo.com Tel:+2348033330927

Accepted: 19 August 2018 Published: 30 June 2019

Citation: Oseni YO. Evaluation of pharmacy practice regulations in Nigeria: The pharmaceutical inspectors perspective. Trop J Pharm Res 2019; 18(6):1353-1360 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v18i6.29

© 2019 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate pharmacy practice laws and regulations in Nigeria and recommend ways to overcome the challenges facing its implementation.

Methods: Semi-structured questionnaire of 19 questions was administered to pharmaceutical inspectors of the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) to assess pharmacy practice laws and regulations in terms of its mandate, the challenges in implementation and recommendations for amendment for legislative attention. Data were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics.

Results: Respondents (87.5%) were not satisfied with the existing laws and regulations and 56.3% agreed that they were inadequate to regulate the practice of pharmacy profession in Nigeria. Some respondents (37.5%) agreed that the laws and regulations were not specific on many issues that require regulation and enforcement while all of them (100%) agreed that the laws did not adequately capture offences and penalties for offenders. Half of the respondents (50%) were of the opinion that the name of the regulatory body poses a limitation to the regulation of its sub-cadre while 43.8% agreed that consistent court injunctions and litigation that occurred had hampered regulation of pharmacy practice as a whole.

Conclusion: The existing laws and regulations are inadequate to regulate the current pharmacy practice in Nigeria. Need for speedy review in order to meet up with the current reality in practice, wide publicity, increase manpower, adequate funding and strong legal backing of PCN activities were recommended.

Keywords: Pharmacy practice, Drug laws and regulations, Pharmaceutical inspectors