The role and experience of Sudan in assisting to develop and implement national drug policies

Improving effectiveness of the public pharmacy is by switching resources towards areas of need, reducing inequalities and promoting better health. Unless there are clear incentives for pharmacists, they can move away from public sector. The public sector is rigid, bureaucratic personnel-management practices, low incentives, poor job satisfaction and unsupportive work environment compared to the private sector. Such situation demoralised pharmacists and encourages them to join the private sector. Many (65%) of surveyed private-sector pharmacists claimed they were public sector pharmacists migrated to the private sector. Although information on migration is sparse, anecdotal evidence persuasively underscores the problem. An internal flow of pharmacists plagues all states, since pharmacists move from poorer states to wealthier ones and from the public sector to the private. Strategies to meet current and future challenges in pharmacy human resources are urgently needed. Approaches that focus on the training of individuals, which do not take into account the job satisfaction (i.e. the nature of the work itself) and pharmacists’ mobility, can enjoy only limited success. Increased production alone cannot compensate for weak motivation, high attrition and increasing mobility. To reverse decades of neglect, policy-makers in both (state and federal level) should begin now, first by recognising the problem and secondly by fixing it through the immediate implementation of potentially effective strategies.