Beyond the chemist: Pharmacies to play a bigger role in family planning

Pharmacy and Poisons Board inspectors conduct post-market surveillance to ensure health products meet required standards of quality, safety and efficacy. [Benard Orwongo,Standard]

For many women, the pharmacy is the health facility they can reach fastest. It may be closer to home or work, open beyond normal working hours and offer a degree of privacy that makes it easier to ask questions about contraception.

Yet buying a packet of pills or condoms from a pharmacy is not the same as receiving quality family planning care.

A five-year project in Kenya is seeking to bridge that gap by moving selected community pharmacies beyond simply dispensing contraceptive commodities to providing counselling, method choice and selected reproductive health services.