Joint FIP/WHO guidelines on good pharmacy practice: standards for quality of pharmacy services
Background:
Under the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Revised Drug Strategy adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1986, WHO organized two meetings on the role of the pharmacist, in Delhi, India in 1988 and in Tokyo, Japan in 1993. This was followed by the adoption, in May 1994, of the World Health Assembly Resolution WHA47.12 on the role of the pharmacist, in support of the WHO Revised Drug Strategy.
In 1992 the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) developed standards for pharmacy services under the heading “Good pharmacy practice in community and hospital pharmacy settings”. The text on good pharmacy practice was also submitted to the WHO Expert Committee on Specifications for Pharmaceutical Preparations in 1994. Following the recommendations of the WHO Expert Committee and the endorsement of the FIP Council in 1997, the FIP/WHO joint document on good pharmacy practice (GPP) was published in 1999 in the thirty-fifth report of the WHO Expert Committee on Specifications for Pharmaceutical Preparations (WHO Technical Report Series, No. 885).
Subsequently WHO organized two more meetings on the role of the pharmacist, in Vancouver, Canada in 1997 and in the Hague, the Netherlands in 1998. These meetings reinforced the need for pharmacy curricular reform and the added value of the pharmacist in self-care and self-medication. In collaboration with WHO, the first edition of a practical handbook Developing pharmacy practice — a focus on patient care was launched in 2006. This handbook is designed to meet the changing needs of pharmacists, setting out a new paradigm for pharmacy practice and presenting a step-by step approach to pharmaceutical care.
With the overall aim of improving standards and practice of distribution and use of medicines, using the FIP/WHO guidelines for GPP as the framework, FIP took the initiative to explore the possibilities for providing technical assistance to its Member Organizations in Cambodia, Moldova, Mongolia, Paraguay, Thailand, Uruguay and Viet Nam, in developing national standards for GPP in a pilot study from 2005 to 2007. In 2007 the “Bangkok declaration on good pharmacy practice in the community pharmacy settings” in the South East Asia Region was adopted by the FIP South-East Asia Pharmaceutical Forum and set out the commitment of its Member Associations towards raising standards of pharmacy services and professional practice.
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Table of contents
3. Definition of good
pharmacy practice
4. Requirements of good
pharmacy practice
WHO TRS (Technical Report Series) 961, 2011 Annex 8: