Olumide Akintayo, President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria in this interview with Nonye Ben-Nwankwo appraises the health sector and highlighting his achievements in office

Your tenure as the President of PSN would expire soon, what do you think most people or even the association would remember you for?

Our upbringing does not allow us to embrace praise singing. Posterity will evaluate my contributions. I believe strongly. I promised a 13 point agenda and my NEC and Council delivered on 12 in unambiguous terms with some other surpluses even as at 2014. Some will suffice.

Federal Government inaugurated a National Committee on Prescription Policy for the country on the prompting of the PSN to ensure rational use of medicines.

PSN launched a new membership I.D Card and Certificate Scheme for Members. PSN adopted New Constitution 2013. We acquired two units of 2-bedroom apartments in Lekki. Our asset base increased by over 100 per cent in the last three years. PCN has gone further to approve payment of professional fees not less than one per cent of transaction through the use of PCN seals for pharmacists involved in importation of medicine and tender business with regards to medicines. These were initiatives of the PSN under my watch in recent years.

Today we have produced about 15 directors in the Federal health institutions. First Pharmacist-Director in a core Nigerian teaching hospital emerged at UCH, Ibadan.

Of course we have also improved the corporate profile of pharmacists and pharmacy through an unprecedented media blitz.

Now that your tenure is about to end, do you think the fight for pharmacists to become designated consultants will still continue?

The right to become Consultants is a global phenomenon. Conventional propriety therefore suggests pharmacists who are Nigerian citizens can exercise a chartered liberty to demand for their rights. The agitation to become consultants naturally transcends the Olumide Akintayo Presidency. From Australia, the U.K, the U.S.A and others, we have shown graphic evidence about the roles of Consultant pharmacists. We therefore cannot accept a situation whereby our destinies will be tied to the whimsical and capricious proclivities of other Nigerians who belong to an extremely selfish profession. If a man chooses to contend with you on a template of hatred laced in antiquity or other variants of satanic antagonism, you will be very stupid to surrender it all. Pharmacists will be consultants in this clime either these persons like it or not. It is an idea whose time has come.

Some people would likely think the quest of pharmacists seeking to become consultants stemmed from the fact that their ‘arch rivals’, doctors, are consultants in their field. What’s your take on this?

We have always been an autonomous profession and of course, no species of homo-sapiens can take that away. I don’t get into rivalries or popularity contests with people because it suggests either character deficiency or a persecution complex. A pharmacist who is worth his salt should be able to assert himself anywhere without reference to whosoever. Do avail yourself what oncology pharmacists, paediatrics pharmacists, cardiac pharmacists and others are doing in the Federal health institutions and public hospitals, then you will appreciate the need for specialisation. There are doctors who appreciate the roles these pharmacists play in the value chain of the health sector. For the myopic ones, what they choose to see is attempts by other professionals to rub shoulders or compete with them. I cannot help but pity such practitioners who have brains of children.

At what point do you think this rivalry between doctors and pharmacists would end?

I don’t have a problem even if you relegate agitation for your right to rivalry with persons. Every worker seeks reward for labour because we all go to the same market. The fundamental distortion in healthcare is grounded in the propensity of doctors for a grab-grab syndrome of all resources and privileges in the health sector. This is aided often times by government at all levels. The only result it will continue to produce is contending with negative indices in healthcare. Our health system will continue to be immersed in either outright systemic failure or collapse for as long as people in high places choose not to be bold enough to break the hegemonic inclination of doctors who have become emperors who are permanent lords over others in a supposed multidisciplinary sector. Can you imagine that until we pushed, pharmacists and other health workers could not aspire to become directors in Federal health institutions, when the norm in public service is that a university graduate can attain an apogee as director. If advocating your right as a citizen of a country that has an equilisation principle embedded in its constitution epitomises promoting a rivalry with anybody, then I will be glad to do it again and again.

Don’t you think that one might likely see pharmacists as ‘jealous’ of doctors because they are the ones that are basically recognised by even the lay man especially when the issue of health is concerned?

Sixty per cent of clients in any health system seek the intervention of pharmacists first before any other provider for their health needs. You then want to imagine the number of useful interventions carried out by pharmacists in all countries including Nigeria.

The question to ask is jealous of who? More doctors are not finding it easy in this land than my colleagues with due respect. A senior doctor who was a senator confronted me with this type of declaration at a Senate Public Hearing many years ago and I politely told him that it is a pharmacist who is not ambitious who will be jealous of a doctor. In practical terms, pharmacy is much more rewarding financially than most other professions which revolve around only service rendition because it has a commercial plenitude. That is in fact the attraction to pharmacy by infiltrators.

In your sober moments, don’t you wish you had studied Medicine rather than Pharmacy?

I stand on my honour to tell you regrets have never arisen. Pharmacy has taken me to places other professions might not have taken me. For records, the condition to study pharmacy and medicine are the same, the core subjects are physics, chemistry and biology. Even when I am almost tired of doing this, I say again for posterity that in our days, the cut-off to study pharmacy was higher than medicine. My JAMB score was about 300. In my class, over 12 guys crossed the 300 mark out of 400. In year two, those who had direct entry had a 12 point aggregate. You see clearly that these guys could have studied any course without hindrance. At the risk of sounding petty, when our preliminary courses included mathematics, physics, chemistry, zoology and botany, medical students on the other hand studied sociology along other common subjects because they failed mathematics and could not cope. Pharmacy is abstract and tough to study while medicine is easier because you practically see all you are taught. Do you know how many pharmacists who topped JAMB lists when they gained admission? Only recently in the 2013/14 academic session at UNN, the best graduating student in the entire university with a GPAverage of 4.88 was a student of pharmacy. I can go on and on, but realistically if I had another chance to fill my JAMB like I did about 35 years ago, I will fill pharmacy as first and second choice with Ife as destination of choice.

Don’t you feel bad that your noble profession is reduced to one where an apprentice could study under his master and set up his own patent store after a couple of years?

It is an aberration which you find only in Nigeria. It can be annoying or frustrating indeed. I have learnt however to dwell in the positive realm. Life is what you make it. If you decide to benchmark with apprentices or medicine dealers, then you will easily miss your calling.

I choose to see my colleague who drives chains in retail pharmacy, some run billion range businesses, others who are wholesalers run businesses in properties that are the best in the neighbourhoods with hundreds of millions in turnover every month. In the industry, the most successful manufacturer is a pharmacist of repute, while the single largest importer who has over 100 registered products is a successful pharmacist. I have all the data and I showcase them occasionally. So why do you think I will put myself at the level of gate crashers in our practice?

Do you think we would ever come to that stage where Nigerians would stop visiting patent stores where drugs are ‘mixed’ for them?

Sure we will. It is only a phase. You cannot run your race faster than your environment. Nigerians must learn to patronise professionals for all services not only for drugs. When you patronise quacks for cheaper alternatives, you will reckon with the bitterness that follows in leisure. The Buhari administration is enjoying some goodwill to stem the tide of value migration in our land. We can turn things around and make this a choice destination in the quest for fulfillment in all endeavours.

What is your assessment of the health agenda of the Buhari Administration?

It is important to put on record that the National Health Act is probably the only statute that attracted the attention of a wide spectrum of stakeholders in health and the larger society. There is therefore an urgent need to factor in this broad spectrum solidarity in fashioning the implementation of the National Health Act.

Recently, the Federal Ministry of Health was reported as having sworn in a new Technical Review Committee for the National Health Act (NH Act 2014).

The Committee has a mandate to guide the implementation of the National Health Act.

Naturally, the Joint Health Sector Unions/ Assembly of Healthcare Professionals accept the principle of setting up committees which is also within the powers of the Federal Ministry of Health.

As a follow up to the Technical Review Committee on the National Health Act 2014, a series of other implementation templates of the National Health Act have emerged with only members of one profession (medicine) dominating all. In fact representation is not sought from other professional associations and unions in the health sector.

We are however worried that the members of the 26-man Technical Review Committee and other related committees are unknown to the larger portion of key stakeholders. Of more concern is that, representation in the Technical Review Committee has not been extended to professional associations and unions in the health sector.

The government must face the reality that in the context of the National Health Act 2014, the professional associations and trade unions in the health sector constitute major stakeholders. Why will they sideline key stakeholders in fashioning the implementation of the National Health Act? It will not augur well for the sector.

If we assume that this was premised on a good knowledge of the healthcare sector, then emerging trends clearly indicate we are headed for more discord and conflicts in the health sector.

In a rather bizarre and most undemocratic process, six doctors including agents of Western donor agencies in Lagos State that championed the commercialisation of health facilities were charged with the responsibility of crafting the health policy of the administration.

One of the key recommendations of the committee was to canvass a “reform of the Federal Ministry of Health and reduce the number of agencies from 14 to three based on alignment of scope and deliverables.

Curiously, the administration has sought views and position papers on healthcare agenda from strange templates especially a particular group of entrepreneurs in healthcare rather than the true representatives of healthcare providers and who are well structured into various healthcare professional associations and trade unions.

Source: The Punch