Hospital jobs: Fill pharmacist vacancies, govt urged

Pakistan Pharmacist Association says just one pharmacist for every 1,200 beds.

LAHORE: The government must fill all vacant posts for pharmacists in public hospitals, as there is currently an average of just one pharmacist for more than 1,200 beds in the country, the Pakistan Pharmacists Association (PPA) has said.

The World Health Organisation suggests that there be one pharmacist for every 50 beds, said PPA officials Noor Mehar and Nadeem Iqbal on Sunday.

They said that while there were 45 schools in the country, including 28 in Punjab, producing 2,700 pharmacists a year, there were 15,000 unemployed pharmacists in Pakistan, and 10,000 in the Punjab, they said.

There are hundreds of vacancies for pharmacists in public hospitals, they said. The Lahore General Hospital alone had 88 vacancies and the Punjab Institute of Cardiology 25, they said. Even though the Supreme Court in 2006 ordered the government to appoint pharmacists to hospitals, and the Punjab government issued orders in October 2012 to fill all vacant posts, no action had been taken, they said.

They added that most private institutions teaching pharmacy were operating without a licence from the Central Pharmacy Council in Islamabad and charged Rs125,000 per six-month semester, while public institutions charged Rs40,000 a year.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2013.