PHARMACISTS FOR ALL DISTRICT HEALTH FACILITIES (PAGE 55)

THE Ghana Health Service (GHS) has decided to attach pharmacists to all of its facilities in the districts to ensure proper storage and management of drugs.
The Chief Pharmacist of the Service, Mr Ohemeng Kyei, who made this known at the annual Pharmacy Sub-Sector Performance Review meeting in Koforidua on Tuesday stated that the initiative would also make it possible for effective drug distribution and appropriate dispensation to patients, particularly pregnant women.
The three-day event was on the theme “Reducing Maternal Mortality in Ghana: Optimising the Role of the Pharmacist”.
It was aimed at taking stock of the performance of the Pharmaceutical Service for the past year and plan for the future with the view of addressing its inherent challenges.
According to Mr Kyei, it had become necessary to post pharmacists to the districts because of the so many problems associated with drug use by patients.
He said the process would ensure that the right quantities of drugs procured and sent there were stored well, distributed and rationally used at all levels, particularly among pregnant women who would also be advised on drugs that would endanger their lives and those of their unborn children.
Spelling out the functions of the pharmacist, he said such health workers were to audit and document whatever prescriptions meant for patients, especially pregnant women.
This, Mr Kyei said, helped improve service delivery and reduced the risk that some of such medicines posed to the health of the child and the mother.
With regard to hemoglobin levels of pregnant women, he said since that was essential in antenatal and post natal care, pharmacists must ensure that safe and efficacious blood tonic were selected, procured and dispensed to pregnant women.
“Pharmacists must also ensure that quantities of blood tonics required by a pregnant woman would be determined and supplied to ensure that the right amount of elemental iron needed for blood formation would be delivered,” he stated.
For his part, the Eastern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Erasmus Agongo, said the country recorded nearly 1,000 maternal deaths every year, describing the situation as “a disaster to many families.”
He, therefore, appealed to pharmacists to help ensure easy access to drugs and their proper use, family planning and safe abortion to reduce maternal mortality.
Dr Agongo also stressed the need for pharmacists to actively involve themselves in the administration of health facilities as 50 per cent of the resources being used by hospitals were associated with medicines.