Regulators, ministries of health, policymakers and national pharmacy organisations are being encouraged to assess regulations in their country related to pharmacy-based care of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) with a development tool available from FIP today.

Against the backdrop of major challenges that NCDs present to health systems and inadequate numbers of sufficiently trained healthcare providers, enhancing the role of the pharmacist and the availability of primary healthcare services in community pharmacy is a global imperative. FIP has been addressing needs in this area through its Practice Transformation Programme on NCDs and the “Management of non-communicable diseases: Regulatory self-assessment and development tool for transforming pharmacy practice” is the programme’s latest output.

The tool has been developed by an expert group gathered under the auspices of the FIP Forum of Pharmacy Professional Regulators. It is based on their experiences from countries where pharmacy services targeting NCDs (including testing, measurement of parameters, such as blood pressure and peak expiratory volume, and prescribing or modifying prescriptions) have been successfully introduced and regulated, and on researched pharmacy practice legislation from around the world.

“Some countries have drafted and enacted enabling legislation to position the pharmacist to provide patient care to meet NCD needs while safely filling in some of the gaps that exist. This resource provides an excellent template to assess the status of pharmacy practice regarding NCDs as well as being an invaluable tool for countries that currently do not have pharmacists involved in an expanded scope in this area,” said Ronald Guse, chair of the FIP Forum of Pharmacy Professional Regulators.