World Pharmacists Day 2022

World Pharmacist Day is an initiative by the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) to promote the role that pharmacists play in improving patient safety.

The theme this year was ‘Pharmacy united in action for a healthier world’ and all pharmacy colleagues were invited to participate by organising campaigns and events.

Save the Children provide pharmacy services in over 30 countries. Each country has a pharmacy team to enable access to medicines and ensure the provision of safe and effective pharmacy services. This includes everything from medicines procurement from qualified suppliers and manufactures and adequate and effective transportation and storage to maintain the quality of medicines. It also includes safe prescribing and dispensing and effective counselling to ensure patients are able to take medicines as intended by the prescriber.

Our pharmacy colleagues around the world face numerous challenges to ensure all of the above are implemented and for World Pharmacist Day 2022, we held some campaigns to celebrate our achievements and successes and promote our work. One pharmacy colleague was interviewed on national television in Sudan, a multi-disciplinary pharmacy focused project review was organised in Yemen and we celebrated the achievements of the Pharmacy team in Afghanistan overcoming multiple challenges and continuing to provide pharmacy services to patients in the face of adversity.

Nahla Basalih, Save the Children's Pharmaceutical Operations Officer, interviewed on Sudanese national TV for World Pharmacist Day.

Yemen

Maintaining effective pharmacy service provision in countries under long term conflict takes continual problem solving by a dedicated team. Medicines can only be imported into Yemen by sea, which means lead times are almost a year long, putting immense pressure on programme delivery, especially in emergency situations.

For World Pharmacist Day, pharmacy colleagues in Yemen organised a meeting with the programme team to review pharmacy service provision. They also discussed areas of improvement to ensure that in future, service provision is even more effective.

The pharmacy team in Yemen in front of a poster for World Pharmacists Day

Sudan

In Sudan, Nahla, our Pharmaceutical Operations Manager was interviewed live on national television on the importance of World Pharmacist Day and the role that Save the Children play in the provision of access to medicines. She discussed the key contributions pharmacists make by providing health care advice to patients, carrying out medicines reconciliations and counselling patients to ensure that they take their medicines effectively.

She also discussed how procuring medicines from safe sources and transporting and storing medicines appropriately ensures that all of our patients receive high quality medicines.

In addition, the team organised a celebration at a local children’s hospital and talked to parents and patients about the importance of consulting a pharmacist for medicines advice.

Extreme weather is one of the challenges in the provision of healthcare services to remote areas in Afghanistan

Afghanistan/SCI global

Save the Children International hosted a global meeting to showcase the incredible achievements of the Pharmacy team in Afghanistan. The team have faced numerous challenges from the change in government and limitation of international flights to the earthquake, economy collapse and widespread poverty and hunger.

The change in government saw the increase of medical freight go from 40% to a cost of 200% overnight and the limited availability of quality medicines in country significantly impacted access to medicines. By working with donors and advocating for the crucial work of Save the Children, the team managed to continue their work with government support and were provided with partially funded freight services to continue to import medicines safely into the country.

Due to the aforementioned challenges, the need for healthcare services has significantly increased and the provision of medical and pharmacy services has reached almost 830 thousand patients in 2022 so far, compared with around 473 thousand in 2021.

During the meeting, the key tips on addressing these challenges were shared with participants, who also had the opportunity to ask questions and the session ended with a summary of key actions to improve and maintain pharmacy services.

Summary

The provision of safe pharmacy services in an international organisation comes with multiple challenges but thanks to our hardworking pharmacy colleagues, no challenge is too big when it comes to ensuring that our patients receive safe medicines. World Pharmacist Day is a great opportunity to recognise and celebrate this.

Roohil Yusuf

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