Some orthodox medicine hawkers within the national capital, Accra, are calling on government to assist them in acquiring licenses to legitimize their businesses.
According to them, intermittent interference in their operations by the enforcement agencies can be curtailed should they have requisite licenses.
Their concerns also come on the back of a directive from the Pharmacy Council to wholesalers of pharmaceutical products to desist from engaging unlicensed retailers of medicines or drug peddlers as wholesalers risk sanctions.
Speaking to Citi News, Tabal Thomas, a 2018 SHS lever who has been hawking orthodox medicines for about a year, said, “I started this business almost one year now, and it has been helping me a lot. I’m an orphan, so this business is taking care of myself and my junior brother. There’s no money for some of us to further our education after Junior High, so it will go a long way to help if government gives us a license to operate so that this arrest by police and the Food and Drugs Authority will be a thing of the past. In that case, we will also get some money to survive. Some of our people who were engaging in this business are now in the police, nursing service amongst others”.
Another hawker also said, “The business is really helping us, some of our customers when they go to the pharmacy and are unable to get medicine, they come to us for purchasing. Sometimes we visit bedridden persons to give them some first aid, and they are able to visit the health facilities the next day. Some of us are educated, so we check the expiry dates and all that before selling to them”.
He added that he uses his phone to Google the necessary dosages of the various medicines before selling advising his customers to desist from taking overdose medication.
“I use my phone to Google the information whenever I come in contact with a drug I don’t know the dosage. Don’t take overdose medicine,” he entreated.
