A renowned pharmacist, Abimbola Adebakin, has urged pharmacists and pharmacy students to explore other areas of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in their service delivery.
Adebakin, the Chief Executive Officer, Advantage Health Africa, made the call on Friday in her keynote address at the Global Health Summit hosted by the Igbinedion University, Okada.
The summit was organised by the Pharmaceutical Association of Nigerian Students (PANS).
The pharmacist said that the role of a pharmacist was beyond curative care as the professionals were as well expected to cover promotive, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care of patients.
She decried how the majority of pharmacists focus only on curative care such as trading of medicines, thereby leaving other cares such as counseling, promotion of healthy life, and prevention of abuse of medicine among others.
Adebakin urged the students to prepare for the task ahead and be ready to explore all areas of opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry.
“For instance, Advantage Health Africa was set up to bridge the gaps which are access, affordability, and quality of medicine.
“If you are doing anything to add value in these three areas, I think you are doing the right thing.
“We were the first in Nigeria to go for online pharmacy when many doubted the viability of the idea,” she said.
Health care services, she said needed collaboration, research, funding, and experience, calling on the students to make themselves relevant wherever they were found in the future.
Mrs Esther Itua, who represented Prof. Moji Adeyeye, the Director-General, National Agency for Foods and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), said pharmacists were required to take patients through administration of medicine.
Adeyeye identified community pharmacy as one of the areas that are lucrative but often ignored by many professionals.
In his remark, Prof. Lawrence Ezemonye, Vice-Chancellor of Igbinedion University emphasised the critical role of pharmacists in the health sector.
Ezemonye, who was represented by his deputy, Prof. Raphael Adeghe, commended the students’ association for bringing the summit to the university, the first time a private university in Nigeria would be hosting the event.
The vice-chancellor said that the event would provide a platform to discuss and analysis the critical role of pharmacists in health care delivery.
Earlier in his address of welcome, Christian Ughagwu, President of the PANS said the summit, first in the annals of the association was aimed at bringing students from the 27 pharmacy accredited universities together to share experience and learn new things.
