Speaking in Benin at the 2022 Summit of ACPN, Edo State chapter, with the theme: “The Indispensable Role of Community Pharmacy in Health Insurance Towards Attaining Universal Health Coverage”, Mr. Duke Otite Chairman, Edo State ACPN, noted that as laudable as the EDOHIS interventionist programme is, “its implementation is not all inclusive”.
He recalled the case of the 34-year old Mrs Aibangbee Rose, a mother of four, and a previously non-hypertensive patient, who was prescribed for by a physician “Tab Liptor 10mg daily x 1/12”, but an auxiliary nurse in a private clinic dispensed “Tab lisiofil 10mg daily for four days” who almost died before physicians at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, UBTH, rescued her from hypotensive state.
Otite noted that such a scenario would have been avoided if the private clinic had a registered pharmacist in its employment.
“In government accredited hospitals settings, the NHIS guidelines for obtaining healthcare from the scheme is followed as the government provided the retinue of professionals including pharmacist providing care. This cannot besaid of the private accredited hospitals/clinics where majority of the accredited do not have registered pharmacists in their establishment and also do not have pharmacy units registered or licensed by the Pharmacist Council of Nigeria, PCN, thereby constituting a contravention of the NHIS Act and guidelines which are prerequisites for accreditation to provide such pharmaceutical skilled services”, he said
He added that the aberration could be “contained by accreditation of qualified community pharmacists into EDOHIS or partnering with community pharmacies”, warning that “the current and continuous exclusion of community pharmacies from the scheme is a serious concern as drugs/medicines are being dispensed without the signature and authority of a registered pharmacist as entrenched in the NHIS Act/guideline”.
In his opening remarks, the chairman of the occasion, Mr. Olumide Akintayo, a former President of PSN, also lamented that “NHIS that rose to 10 percent during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, dropped to 1.7 percent in 2017, whereas Rwanda has a coverage of 90 percent”
While commending Edo State ACPN for organising the summit, Akintayo said that the main of community pharmacy “is to align with the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, to bring health care to the generality of the people”, adding that so far, the scheme had appropriated about N1.5 trillion on drugs.
