MSH’s Better Health in Bangladesh (BHB) project, with assistance from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), is working with the Government of Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) to accredit retail medicine shops as either model pharmacies or model medicine shops, if they meet 12 standards set by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare:
12 Accreditation Standards for Model Pharmacies and Medicine Shops
- Valid drug license for operating and selling a medicine shop
- Registered dispenser
- ≥120 square feet of floor space
- Dispenser trained by BHB on good pharmacy practice
- Patient counseling service
- No sales of antibiotics without prescription
- Antibiotics register
- Labeled disposal bin for expired medicines
- Expired medicine register
- Functioning thermometer to monitor room temperature
- Functioning refrigerator with temperature monitoring
- Saved invoices of purchased medicines
BHB is carrying out the accreditation work in 32 districts with a target of accrediting 4,000 retail medicine shops between 2021 and 2022. BHB’s steps in the process include:
- Conducting pre-assessments of 10,697 randomly selected retail medicine shops
- Identifying 6,357 shops that met criteria 1-3 in the list of 12 above
- Training 6,206 dispensers from these eligible medicine shops on Good Pharmacy Practices (GPP)
- Making multiple shop visits to encourage dispensers’ efforts to meet the 12 criteria
Then a joint inspection with the respective DGDA district official is organized. If the DGDA district official is satisfied with his/her inspection, s/he recommends that the shops be accredited as a model pharmacy or model medicine shop. As of 30 August 2022, DGDA officials had visited 4,077 medicine shops and recommended 3,885 for accreditation, which is 97% of BHB’s 4,000 targets. BHB expects to achieve the 4,000 targets by the end of September 2022.
