Edo ACPN bemoans absence of registered pharmacists in state’s health insurance scheme

The Edo State chapter of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) on Thursday 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 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”.

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 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 the hypotensive state, noted that such a scenario would have been avoided if the private clinic had a registered pharmacist in its employ.

“In government-accredited hospital 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”, Otite bemoaned.

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”.

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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.

In his paper, with the theme of the  Summit, 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 o 200 million, less that 10 percent having access to care, low government funding and exponential raise of patient to doctor care   

He noted that the nation’s health sector “is financed through different sources and mechanisms. 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”, lamenting that “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. While health insurance has been operational in Nigeria for over 15 years, the uptake has remained low”, he further bemoaned.

Afolabi, who disclosed that most community pharmacies operate in isolation to public health care architecture, adding that “as a result, efforts at achieving universal health insurance coverage are hampered not only by shortages in human resources for health and access points for public health care, but also by inability to leverage community pharmacists as healthcare access points”.  

“The health of a country’s health care system”, he concluded, “is fundamentally driven by the strength of its primary care system”.