The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) has commended the Federal Government plans to initiate some reforms aimed at strengthening the regulation of healthcare facilities across Nigeria.
The group also urged the Minister of the State of Health, Tunji Alausa to carry along all segments of the health team in the country in the bid to consolidate on the new agenda of the Federal Ministry of Health.
The association stated these in a statement co-signed and made available to the media by the Chairman and Secretary of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, Ambrose Eze and Omokhafe Ashore.
Reacting to a recent media report in one of the dallies where the Minister of State for Health, Tunji Alausa expressed concerns over unregulated and substandard healthcare services that had plagued the healthcare sector, ACPN in the statement shared the same view with the minister.
The statement however, reads in part: “We share the enthusiasm of the Hon. Minister to deal with the menace of unregulated and substandard health facilities, but respectfully submit that this must be done in tandem with existing acts of parliament and logically the 1999 Constitution. Presently, there are a plethora of health statutes including the National Health Act 2014 which are not activated for the benefit of consumers of health.
“The other leg of the menace of substandard health facilities has to do with the extremely wretched funding of the existing regulatory agencies in healthcare. Only recently an inexperienced and ill-tempered former DG of the Budget Office almost destabilised the health sector by removing the 15 professional regulatory councils from the Appropriation Act of the Federal Government.
“It took the intervention of the Federal Ministry of Health to convince the Presidency and National Assembly of the unwholesome consequences of such moves before it was reversed.
“The Federal Government must exercise discretion as it cannot continue to approbate and reprobate. In one swoop the federal government says it does not have money to cater for existing regulatory councils and in another vein, it is contemplating setting up a new national health regulatory facility ‘which shall regulate across the country.’
“A new structure comes with a plethora of new personnel and bureaucracy in addition to offices, equipment and so on which implies we shall have a tens of billion range new bureaucracy albeit wastefully and unnecessarily.
“All that the federal government apparently needs is to strengthen existing regulatory agencies like PCN, NAFDAC, MDCN, MLSCN and others to enable them have deliverables.”
On the other hand, ACPN stressed the need to sensitise the Federal Ministry of Health and Tunji Alausa in particular to appreciate the peculiarities of the practice of the professions in healthcare.
Stating that drug matters are listed as item 21 in part 1 of the 2nd schedule in the 1999 constitution, ACPN in the release added: “This is the reason pharmacy practice is on the exclusive list which is why only the National Assembly can legislate on pharmacy practice while the Federal Ministry of Health through the PCN and NAFDAC implement all pharmacy laws.
“In similar spirit, only the Federal High Courts have a jurisdiction to adjudicate on pharmacy matters. All other health professions are conventionally on a health matters list which is traditionally on the concurrent list.
“The 1999 constitution did not however place health matters on the concurrent, exclusive or residual list. Parliamentary protocols and other administrative process have compelled a resort to the 1979 norm of having health matters on the concurrent list as a benchmark in the current dispensation.
“This is the major reason all the 36 states and FCT, Abuja have created regulatory facilities to regulate health practices in medical laboratory science, medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, radiography and other healthcare professional practices. The Federal Ministry of Health may therefore wish to partner the respective State Ministries of Health to achieve better results in the value chain of health management.”
