BHB appraises the Technical Management Committee members on 2023 progress

The Technical Management Committee, headed by the Director General, Drug Administration, meets quarterly to review the progress of the Better Health in Bangladesh (BHB) project activities. The last meeting of the year was held on 22 November 2023 at the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) offices and was chaired by Major General Dr. Mohammad Yusuf, Director General. At the meeting’s outset, Prof. Dr. Md. Ismail Khan, Vice Chancellor of the Chattagram Medical University, presented, “Preventing Antimicrobial Resistance Together”, which commemorated World AMR Awareness Week 2023. BHB Principal Technical Advisor, Dr. Md. Iftekhar Hasan Khan, then highlighted BHB’s progress. For example, in 2023, pre-assessment, which is the first step toward accrediting retail medicine shops as model medicine shops was completed for 3,461 medicine shops against the target of 3,000. Of those pre-assessed medicine shops, one dispenser from each of 2,500 shops will be selected to enter the training program, which the Director General inaugurated in December.  BHB plans to work with DGDA to accredit 3,500 retail medicine outlets as model medicine shops or model pharmacies by the end of 2024. Dr. Iftakhar added that BHB had thus far trained 11,577 medicine dispensers, and with the current batch of 2,500, the total trained will be 14,077 against a target of 14,000, Cumulatively, 6,735 retail medicine shops have been given accreditation, and with the additional 3,500 medicine shops this year, the total number of accredited medicine shops will reach 10,235 against the target of 10,000.