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Pharmacy students intensify row with diploma holders

protest

A student outside Parliament during a demonstration by the Pharmacy Students of Kenya Association on November 5, 2018. Photo | AGGREY OMBOKI | NMG

Undergraduate pharmacy students held a protest today calling for withdrawal of sections of the Health Amendment Bill that propose registration of pharmacists and pharmaceutical technicians under one board, stepping up the degree holders' fight against those with diplomas.

The learners belonging to the Kenya Pharmaceutical Students Association (KePHSA) say the the Bill sponsored by Majority Leader Aden Duale will dilute quality of professionalism in the key medicines sector.

Led by chair Cohen Andove, the students marched in a procession through the streets of Nairobi, starting from Uhuru Park and on to the office of the President at Harambee House before ending up at Parliament.

They later presented a petition to Speaker Justin Muturi calling for the withdrawal of Chapter 244 which they claim is dangerous to the entire healthcare sector.

“KePHSA is disillusioned to learn of the proposed amendments to the Cap 244 which is an Act of Parliament to make better provision for the control of the profession of pharmacy and the trade in drugs and poisons. While we agree with certain clauses in the proposed amendments we reject it in entirety as it fails to address the fundamental issues of pharmacy practice,” Mr Andove said Monday.

Christine Ndanu, a pharmacy student at the University of Nairobi with a diploma in pharmaceutical technology, said there was no law against diploma students advancing their qualifications by studying for the degree.

“I have gone through the diploma course and now I have joined the university. If diploma students wish to be recognised as pharmacists, let them go back to school just as I did,” she said.

Lump together

The amendment seeks to, among other things, register pharmacists and pharmaceutical technicians using the title ‘pharmacy practitioners’, and grade them under one job group.

According to them, the move essentially degrades the rigorous Pharmacy course that takes five years to the same level as the diploma pharmaceutical technicians' syllabus that takes 18 months to complete.

“As future pharmacists the future looks bleak to us with this new amendments and that is despite of the rigorous training we have undergone...We also read malice in the legislator (Baringo Woman Rep Gladwell Chesire) who proposed the Bill in parliament and reject her antics which continue to stagnate our very young democracy as her failure to engage all stakeholders of the pharmacy profession betrays the very basic tenets of our democracy,” said Mr Andove.

The protest comes just days after Pharmacists under the Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya (PSK) moved to court in a bid to stop their regulator - the the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) - from licensing diploma holders to operate pharmacies.

PSK claimed that the PPB was planning to start receiving online applications to licence technicians last Friday.