Association sponsors training of community pharmacists on vaccination

The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) has called for the training of community pharmacists on vaccination.
 
The body made the call during its 40th National Scientific Conference in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

President of the group, Dr. Samuel Adekola, while speaking during a facility tour to the Emzor Group Pharma factory located in Ogun State, said that the association was in the factory to witness the development in the pharmaceutical industry.

As part of the association’s scientific conference, the company offered certificate vaccination training to pharmacists in Nigeria via its seven modules CPR/BLS training programme to enhance pharmacy-based vaccination delivery.

Speaking on the initiative, Dr. Adekola, said the aim of the training was to increase manpower in health delivery in Nigeria. 

According to him, “the training is essential to increase the manpower in health delivery in Nigeria. The training would go a long way to help the country to achieve the goals of universal health coverage. 

“It is a fact that COVID-19 pandemic has raised the awareness of vaccination as a public health intervention and the ACPN, with the approval of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), is licensing community pharmacists to commence vaccination of adults on the premises. Therefore, this training comes on board to prepare a good number of our members for the task.”

The training, which was in partnership with the College of Pharmacy, Mercer University, United States of America (USA), had facilitators from the American Institution to train Nigerian pharmacists in the areas of background information about vaccines, vaccines conditions, patient screening, education and consent storage, handling, delivering and waste management, review of vaccination equipment/supplies and others. 

The pharmaceuticals company sponsored the training of 125 Pharmacists, out of the 200 Pharmacists that undertook the training.
   
Welcoming the association, the Group Managing Director of the Emzor Group, Dr. Stella Okoli, said: “Malaria is a leading cause of death on the African continent. To tackle its menace, we entered into an agreement with India’s Mangalam Drugs and Organic Limited to locally manufacture and distribute Active Pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for the treatment and prevention of malaria. This agreement affirms our long-standing position to strengthen the pharma sector in Africa.”