In January 2023, the Vice President of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia officially launched the National Electronic Pharmacy Platform (NEPP).
NEPP is the first national scale e-Pharmacy platform in Africa and one of the few in the world. It is a digital convergence of licensed pharmacies across the country that allows Ghanaians to access and purchase prescription drugs by placing a mobile phone order through the e-Pharmacy app, website or a short code and deliver the drug in a requested location.
The platform helps them comply with its regulations Pharmaceutical Council of Ghana, which oversees the licensing and monitoring of pharmacies and pharmacists in the country. The platform also facilitates the collection and analysis of data, which can inform policy-making and planning in the pharmaceutical sector.
Slow startup and charges?
Although launched ten months ago, the platform seems to have had a slow start. In the list of online pharmacies, the platform right now has only 18 listed pharmacies in Accra, Ashanti, and Central area without pharmacies in the northern part of the country.
In the list of e-Pharmacy platforms, the platform currently has one registered platform with Healthker being the only platform.
According to a Press release in 2022 by the Pharmacy Council of Ghana, ePharmacies must pay a fee of 275 GHC. Obviously ePharmacies should too pay GHC 500 to be accredited.
Overlapping Services?
Some have argued that the e-pharmacy platform is duplicating services already done by some healthcare platforms.
mPharma’s Mutti platform is an online pharmacy that provides its users with access to quality and affordable medicines and healthcare. With the e-pharmacy platform also providing similar services, it is essentially competitive.
What happens next?
It remains to be seen whether the program will accelerate next year with more registrations on the platform. In our view, it seems that it would be wiser for the Government of Ghana to regulate rather than create platforms that could be handled more by the private sector.
We want to fix ourselves in the long run.
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