Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

State of Pharmacy Education in Bangladesh

Gazi Mahabubul Alam¹ , Mirja Mohammad Shahjamal², Abul Quasem Al-Amin³, Mohammad Nurul Azam⁴

¹Academic Performance Enhancement Unit, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; ²British Council, 5 Fuller Road, Dhaka, Bangladesh; ³Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, Malaysia; ⁴Department of Quantitative Analysis, College of Business Administration, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

For correspondence:- Gazi Alam Email: gazimalamb@yahoo.com

Received: 10 October 2013 Accepted: 20 November 2013 Published: 24 December 2013

Citation: Alam GM, Shahjamal MM, Al-Amin AQ, Azam MN. State of Pharmacy Education in Bangladesh. Trop J Pharm Res 2013; 12(6):1107-1112 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v12i6.36

© 2013 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

The current state of pharmacy education in Bangladesh and identification of the current gaps in terms of manpower development for the pharmaceutical sector are described in this paper.

Information for the preparation of this paper was obtained from documents and interviews of stakeholders drawn from regulatory, industrial and educational agencies. Three levels of pharmacy education is currently offered in Bangladesh leading to either a university degree, a diploma or a certificate. Graduates with degrees work in industry while those with diplomas work in hospitals. Thus, hospitals are not benefiting from the training of pharmacy graduates just like community pharmacies that employ those with certificates. This situation is encouraged by lack of prescribed minimum standards required for the training of practitioners and practice of pharmacy in Bangladesh. Conflict of regulatory roles in the training of those with diplomas does exist. The state of pharmacy education in Bangladesh is less than satisfactory. A proper regulatory framework that ensures quality training of pharmaceutical manpower is lacking. Community and hospital pharmacies, therefore, have an unmet need in terms of the skill of the staff that operates them. The situation is further encouraged by the absence of minimum standards requirements for pharmacy practice.

Keywords: Pharmacy education, Community pharmacists, National development, Public and Private Sectors, Policy