The federal government has said the newly created pharmacy consultant cadre in the civil service will help stem the tide of brain drain and improve health service delivery in the country.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, stated this during a workshop organised by the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) in collaboration with the West African Postgraduate College of Pharmacists (WAPCP), Nigeria chapter, to kick-start the implementation of the pharmacist consultant cadre within the healthcare system in Nigeria.
Dr Ehanire said, “The government recognises that pharmacists are key to achieving the goals and objectives of the strategic health sector reform in Nigeria.
“Thus, the creation of the consultant pharmacist cadre by the National Council on Establishment (NCE) is part of the overall effort of the government to reposition the pharmacy profession for the provision of more improved and quality healthcare services to the people.
“It is also hoped that this will stem the tide of brain drain to other parts of the world in search of specialisation and better remuneration.”
The minister who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Abdullahi Mashi, said the Federal Ministry of Health had liaised with the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission (NSIWC) to include consultant pharmacists in the specialists’ allowance for consultant healthcare professionals.
The Registrar of PCN, Elijah Mohammed, said the journey to achieving the pharmacy consultant cadre was arduous and challenging.
He said it, therefore, behooved on practitioners to prove that the cadre was expedient for the progress and future of pharmacy in Nigeria.
Mohammed further said the council, as the regulator of pharmacy education, training and practice in the country, was committed to providing the needed environment for good consultancy practice.
The Chairman of the Governing Council of PCN, Prof Ahmed Tijjani Mora, said the Head of Civil Service of the Federation had on September 11, 2020, released a circular approving the scheme of service for pharmacist consultant cadre in the civil service.
Prof Mora revealed that the PCN had 14 years earlier received a report on the issue from its visitation panel to WAPCP.
He revealed that PCN was organising series of workshops in Lagos, Enugu and Kaduna to induct its fellows that were now approved consultants as they officially began a new phase of their professional practice in the federal, state and local governments, as well as in the private sector.
Asked if the new cadre would cause disharmony with other health professionals, the Chairman of WAPCP, Nigeria chapter, Dr Chijioke Onyia, said it was not supposed to cause any conflict of interest or disharmony because the global norm was collaborative healthcare; where each played his or her own designated role in the management of a patient.
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