Online Reporter
AN unlicensed pharmacy is no different from a person hawking medicines or herbs on the street.
No independent framework to institute quality control, just a pharmacist on the other side of the counter, or a vendor with his herbs spread on the tarmac along Fifth Avenue or Basch Street in Bulawayo dispensing drugs for a charge.
Anything can happen with medicines or herbs sold that way. They might have expired thus useless or dangerous to human health; there is no way one can independently verify the dosages and if any complication arises, recourse can be cumbersome, or impossible.
Both are therefore serious threats to public health, thus must be brought to order.
We raised the red flag yesterday over the existence of dozens of unregistered pharmacies in Matabeleland region.
The law mandates all pharmacies to apply for registration with the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) after which the Government entity will conduct requisite inspections of the physical offices of the establishments and education profiles of the people working there, among other conditions. If the MCAZ is satisfied, it then issues a licence to successful applicants.
Bulawayo has only 43 permitted pharmacies, according to MCAZ but we established that there are many more outlets that are not registered or whose licences are expired.
It is a challenge elsewhere in the region.
We are deeply concerned that there are pharmacies that are selling medicines yet they are of no-good standing before the law. This is a dangerous situation which demands immediate and robust corrective action from the MCAZ, police and other law enforcement agencies.
We ask the MCAZ to go on the ground, looking for unregistered farmers and shutting down those that are operating without licences. The owners or senior executives at such outlets must be arrested with portions of the punishments being visited upon them at a personal level, not for them to hide behind the corporate veil as if corporates run themselves.
We also ask the leaderships of the unregistered or unlicensed pharmacies to submit to the law, appreciating that their work is delicate, thus must be done in a professional manner. They must simply close their businesses, apply for operating licences from MCAZ and only resume work after the authority completes the licensing process.
But it is also important for MCAZ to, before going the punitive way, engage the businesses in point and understand the reasons why some of them are operating unlicensed. It might be because the licensing process is too expensive or tortuous. If that is the case, it will be good for authorities to ease the conditions in line with the Government’s ease of business thrust.
