THE Pharmaceutical Society of Jamaica yesterday urged the health ministry to provide details about the merger between the National Health Fund (NHF) and Health Corporation Limited (HCL), which is expected to result in the loss of 180 jobs.
The society's president Valrie Germain, in a statement issued to the media yesterday, said it wanted
to know the interim organisational structure as well as the proposed expanded functions under
the merger.
She said, too, that the society also wanted to know how the proposed integration would streamline operations in pharmacy services.
"This is especially important given the fact that since the abolition of user fees there has been a 44 per cent increase in the use of public sector pharmacies, and despite the adverse shortage of pharmacists over two million visits of patients to public pharmacies have occurred within the last two years," Germain said.
At the same time, the Pharmaceutical Society has urged the Ministry of Health to not only increase
the monies spent on pharmaceutical supplies but to recognise the role of pharmacists in medicines management, which it said will ultimately lead to greater cost savings. This, it said, was given that the purchase of pharmaceuticals and medical sundries was the single most costly item on the health ministry's budget and that the budget for the purchase of these items has increased by 167 per cent over the last five years.
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