‘People’s Pharmacies’: Indonesia

The government has come closer to providing affordable drugs for the public by establishing the Apotek Rakyat (People’s Pharmacy) program to enable people to procure inexpensive over-the-counter and prescribed drugs. The People’s Pharmacy is based on a ministerial decree enacted in March 2007.

The decree defines the People’s Pharmacy as a place to carry out pharmaceutical services, including selling drugs. But unlike a regular pharmacy, the People’s Pharmacy will not have a space for combining medications and will sell only pre-packaged drugs according to the article in the Jakarta Post.

Its main focus is to sell inexpensive generic drugs; it is not allowed to provide narcotics, psychotropics and medicinal mixtures, nor to sell medicines in large quantities.

“A People’s Pharmacy only needs a small space, medicine chests and a clean vicinity,” Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Monday at the Indonesian Pharmacologists Association (ISFI) Congress in Jakarta.

“Thus it is easy to set one up,” she said.

Siti said that the People’s Pharmacy would provide cheap and quality medicine in the hope of eradicating counterfeit drugs.
The government would prioritize ownership of People’s Pharmacies for pharmacists, she said.

She added that she wanted pharmacists to have entrepreneurship skills, which would enable them to run their own drug stores.

“A graduate from a school of pharmacology needs to become proficient at pharmaceutical management. He or she should be able to manage to make sure the medicine falls into the right hands.

“If the medicine falls into the wrong hands, then the pharmacist would be the one to blame,” Siti said.

Based on the law, a People’s Pharmacy must have at least one pharmacist in charge.

Siti said that in this way pharmacists would be spread all over Indonesia and become more independent.

Asked about the amount of capital needed to start a People’s Pharmacy, Siti said that the government would provide a loan if a pharmacist was not able to come up with the funds.

The head of the association, Haryanto Dhanutirto, said that the loans of up to Rp 150 million (US$16,854) could be made available on the condition that “there must be an agreement with a cooperative, which would be established by the association”.

The loans would only be available to members of the association, said Haryanto.

The Indonesian Pharmacologists Association currently has around 18,000 members.

“Between Rp 200 million to 300 million is needed to build a regular pharmacy,” said Haryanto, adding that a People’s Pharmacy would be much easier to establish.

The decree says that anyone or any business entity can establish a People’s Pharmacy.

Unlicensed drug stores also have the opportunity to convert into People’s Pharmacies, as long as they are able to employ a pharmacist.

The implementation of the decree will be supervised by the Health Ministry, the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) and regency health agencies.

Besides the People’s Pharmacy, the government has launched a few regulations, such as the Rp 1,000 ($0.11) generic drug program in May and name and price labeling on drug packaging in 2004, to improve pharmaceutical service.

The introduction of cheap generic drugs resulted in scarcity of medicines on the market. It was alleged that some companies had bought all of the drugs for fear of business competition.

Price labeling was also a problem because some factories did not implement it and this caused losses to consumers.