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Absence of Registered Pharmacists in Health Insurance Worries Edo Association
Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City
The Edo State chapter of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN), yesterday bemoaned the absence of registered pharmacists in the Edo Health Insurance Scheme,(EDOHIS), especially in the private accredited hospitals and clinics designated to implement the scheme.
Speaking in Benin City 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”, Chairman, Edo State ACPN, Mr. Duke Otite, noted that as laudable as the EDOHIS interventionist programme is, “its implementation is not all inclusive.”
Otite, who 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” and almost died before physicians at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, UBTH, rescued her from hypotensive state, noted that such a scenario would have been avoided if the private clinic had a registered pharmacist in its employ.
Otite said: “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 be said 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 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 Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), also lamented that “NHIS that rose to 10 percent during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, dropped to 1.7 per cent in 2017, whereas Rwanda has a coverage of 90 per cent.
Commending Edo State ACPN for organising the summit, Akintayo said that the main objective 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.
In his paper, the keynote speaker, Mr. Victor Gbenga Afolabi, lamented that Nigeria health care system is bleeding as it is currently the worst in the world, with a growing population of 200 million, less that 10 percent having access to healthcare, low government funding and exponential raise of patient to doctor care.
He further noted that the nation’s health sector is financed through different sources and mechanisms, pointing out that the difference in the proportionate contribution from these sources determines the extent to which such a health sector will go in achieving a successful health care financing system.
“Unfortunately, in Nigeria, achieving the correct blend of these sources remains a challenge. Health insurance has barely scratched the surface in Nigeria with regards to percentage coverage of the population. Ninety-seven percent of Nigeria’s population is not covered by any kind of health insurance. As at 2016, only three percent of health care expenditure in Nigeria was paid for using health insurance according to PWC,” Afolabi lamented.
