Many people in Bangladesh seek health care at retail medicine outlets, yet in the past, the outlets did not have to meet any quality standards. To promote Good Pharmacy Practices (GPP) in the private sector, the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) developed an accreditation program for retail outlets, such as Model Pharmacies and Model Medicine Shops. One of BHB’s most important initiatives is to support DGDA to carry out the accreditation process through a series of steps.
Despite Bangladesh’s worsening COVID-19 situation, BHB has conducted a pre-assessment of about 8,000 retail medicine outlets in three weeks, with plans to complete 10,000 in 2021. A team of 33 experienced monitors, recruited and trained by BHB, are carrying out the pre-assessments.
The owners will have six months to bring their outlets up to standard, such as adding a water source or enlarging the consultation area.
Steps to Retail Medicine Outlet Accreditation
- Trained monitors conduct pre-assessments of the retail medicine outlets to see whether they fulfil the required criteria.
- The dispensers of the eligible medicine outlets are trained on GPP, which includes the whole range of topics required to run a retail medicine outlet such as good dispensing, counselling, and other pharmaceutical services.
- The owners are given a deadline to make the improvements needed to meet the accreditation standards.
- Trained monitors conduct post-assessment of the outlets.
- The outlets receive visits by teams of DGDA and BHB representatives.
- Medicine outlets that fulfil the accreditation criteria receive accreditation certificates from DGDA as either model pharmacies or model medicine shops depending upon their size and criteria.
