Shelves of medicine inside a pharmacy in a Kenyan hospital (file). Photo: Seldonslukoye via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Listen to this article2 min listenAI voice
Tap play to hear this story
You are listening to Kibra News Network.
Duale defends new rules on who can run pharmacies.
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has moved to calm protests by diploma-holding pharmacy workers over new rules that would reserve some drug-handling roles for degree holders only. The Good Pharmacy Practice Standards 2026, now in an eleventh draft, took over five years and several rounds of consultation to prepare.
The Kenya Pharmaceutical Association, which represents pharmaceutical technologists, says the rules would bar its members from managing drug stores in health centres and from handling narcotic and psychotropic medicines, reserving those roles for pharmacists with degrees. Kenya has 9,927 registered pharmaceutical technologists compared with 2,738 pharmacists, and technologists currently run pharmacies in many smaller hospitals and health centres.
KPA secretary-general Eric Gichane and president Chitechi Amboka say the restriction is discriminatory and could leave patients in remote areas without pain relief or mental health medicines. Amboka said a "regulatory framework should never make a medicine legally available in principle but practically inaccessible."
What Duale says changes
Duale clarified that the standards separate ordinary pharmacy practice from the role of "superintendent" in charge of a facility's drug store, saying superintendent qualifications must match the risk level of services offered there. "The Standards do not bar any category of pharmacy professionals, whether diploma or degree holders, from practising or working at any level," he said. The Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya, representing degree holders, backs the standards as a patient-safety measure. For areas like Kibera, where many chemists are run by technologists, the outcome will decide who can keep dispensing medicine locally.
Sources: The Star;
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has moved to calm protests by diploma-holding pharmacy workers over new rules that would reserve some drug-handling roles for degree holders only. The Good Pharmacy Practice Standards 2026, now in an eleventh draft, took over five years and several rounds of consultation to prepare.
The Kenya Pharmaceutical Association, which represents pharmaceutical technologists, says the rules would bar its members from managing drug stores in health centres and from handling narcotic and psychotropic medicines, reserving those roles for pharmacists with degrees. Kenya has 9,927 registered pharmaceutical technologists compared with 2,738 pharmacists, and technologists currently run pharmacies in many smaller hospitals and health centres.
KPA secretary-general Eric Gichane and president Chitechi Amboka say the restriction is discriminatory and could leave patients in remote areas without pain relief or mental health medicines. Amboka said a “regulatory framework should never make a medicine legally available in principle but practically inaccessible.”
What Duale says changes
Duale clarified that the standards separate ordinary pharmacy practice from the role of “superintendent” in charge of a facility’s drug store, saying superintendent qualifications must match the risk level of services offered there. “The Standards do not bar any category of pharmacy professionals, whether diploma or degree holders, from practising or working at any level,” he said. The Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya, representing degree holders, backs the standards as a patient-safety measure. For areas like Kibera, where many chemists are run by technologists, the outcome will decide who can keep dispensing medicine locally.
KNN Newsroom is the staff byline for stories written, rewritten and edited at the Kibra News Network desk. Where a story credits an outside outlet, the original source is linked at the foot of the piece.
