The Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) has announced a nationwide renewal of licenses for 2025 amid a crackdown on unlicensed wholesale drug sellers in the country.
The Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya noted in a statement on Friday, November 1, 2024, that licensed pharmacies should ensure compliance with the standards.
“The Pharmacy and Poisons Board is reminding all pharmacists that the licensing portal will be open for renewal of 2025 licenses beginning today (November 1, 2024),” the statement read.
The registration drive comes amid an intense crackdown on illegal wholesalers of drugs and the supply chain systems in Level Four hospitals.
The drive which started on October 13 and spread through October 20, 2024, sought to establish the distribution and handling of drugs in health facilities.
The crackdown also extended to pharmacies, where the staff employed were cross-checked against the pharmacy and poisons board register.
Cold-chain drug handling
Also, the enforcement officials checked the various ways in which cold-chain drugs were handled as well as compliance issues in the disposing of substances to conform with the NEMA and industry requirements.
Other issues which the audits seek to establish were the unauthorised relocation of wholesalers, theft of government-supplied medication and illegal practices that undermine the integrity of healthcare.
Similarly, the checks consider batching processes, deviations in products, and client history of complaints and responses.
On Wednesday, October 30, 2024, PPB’s Head of Good Distribution Practices Julius Kaluai said their teams would be out to crack down on all chemists and wholesalers operating outside of the law.
Drug resistance
“Such wholesalers will be profiled and also prosecuted. We are using our inspectors to crack down on illegal chemists and will be able to trace the suppliers through invoices,” Kaluai said.
Kaluai also put on notice pharmacists who leave unlicensed people in their facilities and only appear when enforcement teams arrive for inspection.
He noted that such practices put the lives of Kenyans in danger and would not be tolerated during the audit.
“If these people are denied access to medicines because they lack proper licensing, we can put an end to the problem. We have sampled some wholesalers in the country and are dealing with them firmly,” he added.
PPB raised alarm at a trend in which a significant number of patients registered drug resistance to some of the antibiotics, antifungals and other antimicrobial drugs.
“If left unchecked, antimicrobial resistance has the potential to reverse decades of medical progress, leaving us vulnerable to infections that were once easily treatable,” PPB CEO Fred Siyoi said in October 2024.
