A Literature Review: Pharmaceutical Care an Evolving Role at Community Pharmacies in Pakistan

Copyright © 2013 Azhar Hussain et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of pharmaceutical care at community pharmacies in Pakistan. The paper draws on the literature related to current dispensing practices at community pharmacies in developing countries as well as in Pakistan. There are approximately 63,000 community pharmacies in Pakistan, and according to an estimate, 80% of the medicines are being distributed through this channel to majority of the population. They often lack adequate fa-cilities, staffing and equipments. Absence of pharmacists and their roles being performed by the non-qualified personnel working at community pharmacies are a common practice. There are 8102 pharmacists who are categorized as a cate-gory, 31,000 pharmacy technicians categorized in B & C category in the country. There is a shortage of pharmacists who could be engaged for ensuring good pharmacy practices. There are only ten percent of the total pharmacists who work at community pharmacies in the country according to the Pharmacy Council of Pakistan. All kind of medicines are freely available irrespective of their status as prescription or over the counter drugs. The paper highlights that the pro-fessional role of pharmacist in hospitals and community pharmacies is switching from dispensing and sale of drugs, to patient counselling. But, the concept of pharmaceutical care at community pharmacies has not been acknowledged ye