National Good Pharmacy Practice Guidelines Nepal

Standards play an important role in the evaluation and accreditation. The society is going through continuous change in its health care needs and expectations. The health care seeking behaviour has shifted from patient’s passive role to active participation in therapeutic decision-making. In Nepal pharmacy profession itself is in transition. There is a clear need for this profession to evolve and become visible through its mission and vision for providing cost effective pharmaceutical care and services to the society. For this there has to be a basic level of quality assurance component in every pharmaceutical care and service related establishments.

Realising the need of National Good Pharmacy Practice Standards, work was initiated at the Department of Drug Administration (DDA) during 2003 by conducting workshop and making initial draft with the support of WHO. Then the responsibility to prepare a draft document was given to Nepal Pharmacy Council by the Department of Drug Administration as APW of WHO support.

Nepal Pharmacy Council established by HMG as per the Nepal Pharmacy Council Act000 is responsible for setting pharmacy practice standards. The council has mandate to implement such standards and therefore the council took responsibility to draft Good Pharmacy Practice (GPP) guidelines. The guideline was drafted by Nepal Pharmacy Council, then electronic consultation with experts was taken and policy seminar was organised in process of its finalisation as well as development of a realistic national level implementation plan. The activity was co-ordinated by Mr. Keshav Dhoj Joshi Member of Nepal Pharmacy Council and successfully completed by active participation of other members and stakeholders

A realistic Good Pharmacy Practice standard and checklist as quality assurance tools has been set for Nepal taking in account DDA’s earlier work like Standards of Regulatory and Pharmaceutical care 2000, GPP workshop and recommendation 2003, recommendation of the working committee constituted by DDA to develop directives, procedure and determination for enforcing codes on sales and distribution of drugs.