Background & History
Medicines are vital in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure of disease. Assuring the responsible use of medicines is of paramount importance. The affordability of medicines is an important issue in all countries because of limited resources for health services. Hence the search for additional safe, effective and affordable medicines is an important social imperative.
In the FIP Centennial Declaration, pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists accepted responsibility and accountability for improving global health and patient outcomes by improving the development, distribution and responsible use of medicines.
Achieving the goals expressed in this declaration requires an appropriate workforce of pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists who are competent to deliver the full range of pharmaceutical services and to meet the challenges facing global health and patient care. In many parts of the world there are insufficient numbers of qualified pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists. Pharmacy workforce development must be designed to ensure the delivery of services according to local and national needs.
As early as 2008, with the adoption of its strategic plan "Vision 2020", FIP considered education as the third pillar (in addition to practice and science) of its activities, to achieve its mission: "to improve global health by advancing Pharmaceutical Education, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmaceutical Practice thus encouraging, promoting and enabling better discovery, development, access to and responsible use of appropriate, cost-effective, quality medicines worldwide."
This global conference then became one of the priorities of the FIP Education Initiative plan for 2014-2018, with the goal of reaching agreement on how pharmaceutical workforce competency is assured through education.
