No fewer than 25,000 pharmaceutical premises have been sealed while five pharmacists were convicted by the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) within the last eight years.

The PCN Registrar, Dr Elijah Mohammed, made the disclosure during the public presentation of his scorecard in Abuja on Wednesday.

Mohammed noted that the premises were sealed due to poor documentation, poor hygienic environment, non-regularisation of papers, and inappropriate and unethical behavior or conduct.

He said: “The illegal pharmaceutical premises that we closed down within the past eight years are over 25, 000 across the federation.

“They were closed down due to various reasons including poor hygienic environment, poor documentation, improper regularisation of papers and improper behaviours in the shops and premises.”

On pharmacists convicted he explained that “investigating panel sat seven times between 2014 to today: eighty pharmacists appeared before the panel.

“The disciplinary tribunal sat two times between 2014 to date: five pharmacists were convicted by the tribunal. Four pharmacists out of the five were removed from the Register for some time and one pharmacist was sanctioned.”

Mohammed further noted there was an improvement in the number of pharmaceutical premises licensed within the period under review.

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“From 2014 to 2021, there was a 55.94% cumulative improvement in statistics of licensed pharmacists from 11,143 to 17,376 pharmacists. The total number of premises licensed from 2014 to 2021 second quarter increased from 3,762 to a total of 87,883,” he stated.

The PCN Registrar further disclosed that within the last eight years, the number of pharmacies and pharmaceutical sciences faculties in the country also increased from 17 to 30 with some scheduled to kick-start in the next few months.

Mohammed, who listed some of the challenges which confronted the PCN within the period under review to include human resources and infrastructure, acknowledged that much still needs to be done to reposition pharmacy practice in Nigeria.

“We don’t have enough human resources, two; is infrastructure, we don’t have enough vehicles to go round to monitor and carry out enforcement across the community,” he said.

Also speaking at the event, the PCN Chairman, Prof. Ahmed Mora, who applauded efforts of the  Mohammed in mobilising development partners to support the activities of the Council which made the difference, described the outgoing Registrar as very lucky person.

Mora said: “The capacity-building programmes initiated by these partners have been wonderful.

“Indeed, the development partners were to some extent deeply immersed in the implementation of the mandates of the Registry.”

The Star