Municipal Health Department Deputy Director Pham Khanh Phong Lan said the biggest problem most pharmacies are facing is finding pharmacology school graduates to work in the drugstores.

“Though HCMC has the highest number of certified pharmacists with university degrees in the country, most graduates choose to work for pharmaceutical companies rather than at drugstores,” said Lan.

She also said local drugstores commonly skirted some of their taxes and were reluctant to apply GPP standards that required more transparency.

And some drug sellers are worried that local buyers believe GPP pharmacies are more expensive than other drugstores.

Another problem is that drugs have been distributed in Vietnam for years without prescriptions.

Under GPP, pharmacies would not be allowed to sell certain drugs without prescriptions.

Drugstores have been put off by this stipulation, fearing that customers would rather go where they don’t need a prescription.

Changes

Lan said the health department was working on both short- and long-term strategies to move the city toward GPP.

The department walked 80 official hospital pharmacies through the standards-meeting process last year and plans to guide all pharmacies in the city through the GPP process in 2009-2010.

Lan said strengthening human resources (HR) was one of the department’s goals and that investing in HR would be crucial for pharmacies to meet GPP.

To help pharmacies obtain GPP certificates, the department has provided free GPP management software to scores of pharmacies.

Lan also hopes to eliminate a regulation stipulating that pharmaceutical companies must hire university-graduate pharmacists to promote their drugs.

She said the rule meant that most, if not all, university-trained pharmacologists went to work at drug companies.

If it were changed, she said, vocational graduates could fill certain spots at pharmaceutical companies, leaving some university-trained pharmacists to work at drugstores.

Only 171 of the city’s 3,356 pharmacies currently have GPP certificates, which must be renewed every two years, said Lan.

Every pharmacy that receives a GPP certificate will be periodically inspected by the health department and district health bureaus, she said.

GPP standards specify storage and distribution procedures for medicinal products and require that a university-trained pharmacist be on duty at all times.

GPP drugstores must be 10 square meters or larger and sell reasonably-priced drugs of clear origins and good quality.

The GPP are made up of baseline standards issued by the International Pharmaceutical Federation in 1993. The practices were revised in 1997 and have been endorsed by the World Health Organization.

Reported by Van Khoa