Message from President of PCI

Every Pharma professional should come under the pharmacist banner

When I became president of the state council, I was a M.Pharm passed out student. And it was a learning phase for me and I gave my full time to the state council for learning and developing. When I went to register for the first time, I realised the difficulty level for registration and problems faced by me. So I decided to start this process online to save time and money for pharmacy students and professionals. There are many issues like people are coming to register as pharmacists but they are having non-attending degrees or fake degrees or diplomas.

I realised that we and our parents did a lot to get pharmacy degrees while many are getting degrees by power of money. Many of the non-attending diploma holders were coming from families of doctors or physicians, but blame goes to chemist associations. I opposed it and stopped all those applications and initiated action against such diploma colleges.

Later I got an opportunity to serve in the central council, pharmacy council of India where on the first day I took up all the agendas and fought an election for EC (Executive Committee) member where all the council members supported me. Then, as a EC member I took action under section 20 against all the colleges for which we were getting complaints for a long time but no one was ready to take action against it and recommended PCI for surprise inspection of such institutes.

After a few months when our president sir (Dr. B. Suresh) resigned from the post, many PCI members trusted me because a lot of revolutions are required in the field of pharmacy in the country. There are many issues in online pharmacy, hospital pharmacist, industry pharmacy etc. There is a need for changes to fight these issues, still we were busy celebrating the 75 years old act. No one was thinking about professional issues. I kept all these points in front of the PCI members, on which they responded positively and gave me responsibility as president of the pharmacy council of India.

As you have seen the first president of Gujarat state pharmacy council, then EC member and now president of PCI, I always try to work and prove the trust that People have kept upon me. We shall work with all the stakeholders like Indian drug manufacturing associations, all India chemist and druggist associations, government pharmacist associations etc and try to solve their ground level difficulties. This is a drawback of our pharmacy profession and we need to do analysis for that. Since I took charge as president, I went to different places and I just gave them a single message that Doctors come under a single banner even if they are just MBBS or specialised in ortho or surgery. Whenever any agenda or problem comes for them, it comes under a single banner. Therefore, our pharmacists should also think about it that if any problem comes in the profession, it should come under one umbrella only.

Instead of that we are separated in many associations like industries have their association, government pharmacists have their separate association, chemist and druggist have different associations. And because of that we are divided into separate sectors but ultimately all the associations have a single motto to increase the value of the pharmacy profession. So we have to come under a Pharmacist banner to come in a single umbrella. If someone says I'm a Vice chancellor but I think first he is a pharmacist. If someone says I'm a regulator but first they are also pharmacists. If this type of thinking is developed by everyone, it will grow the profession. For example, if any teachers are having problems with their salary, they cannot plead against management or government. So ultimately they get exploitation from it. But if they will join under the pharmacist banner, and now they have any such problems, all the professionals from industry or hospital pharmacy will support them. Same way if chemists will be getting any problems, other professionals like teachers, industry pharmacist, hospital pharmacist will support them. And if hospital pharmacists will have any problems, industry, regulators and other professionals will support them.

Therefore, I think every pharma professional should come under the pharmacist banner and we shall work on this roadmap.