BHB Newsletter

Post-assessment of retail medicine outlets for accreditation begins

BHB provides technical assistance to the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) to facilitate the accreditation of retail medicine outlets in Bangladesh. There are six steps for accreditation, shown below.

Six steps for issuing accreditation certificates to retail medicine outlets

  1. Pre-assessment: Trained monitors conduct pre-assessments of retail medicine outlets to see whether they fulfil the required criteria.
  2. Training: Dispensers of eligible medicine outlets are trained on Good Pharmacy Practices, including dispensing, counselling, and other pharmaceutical services.
  3. Window period: The owners are given a defined period to make the improvements needed to meet accreditation standards.
  4. Post-assessment: Trained monitors conduct post-assessment of medicine outlets.
  5. Joint visit: The outlets receive a visit from joint teams of DGDA and BHB representatives.
  6. Issue of accreditation certificate: Medicine outlets that fulfil the accreditation criteria receive accreditation certificates from DGDA, either as model pharmacies or model medicine shops, depending upon their size and criteria.

After pre-assessing 10,697 retail medicine outlets (107% of the 10,000 target) between June and October 2021 in 32 districts, BHB started training medicine dispensers from the eligible outlets. By February 2022, 4,949 dispensers (82.5% of 6,000 target) had completed the 12-day training, and the remaining training is expected to be completed by April 2022. BHB began the post-assessment process in these 4,949 retail medicine outlets who completed their window period and whose dispensers were trained. We recruited and oriented 11 post-assessment and accreditation associates and one coordinator in February. They have started collecting data using an electronic tool that was developed and tested in the field.

It may be mentioned here that the activities of BHB are implemented with cooperation of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK government.