Pharmacists in the Wider Public Health Workforce – A Review

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a critical shortage of more than 4 million health care workers. Though pharmacists represent the third largest healthcare professional group in the world, they are underestimated and underutilized in many developing nations including India and China. As they are trained at a critically insufficient scale, their large potential is being wasted and remain untapped. Since the number of medicines available to consumers and their complexity is increasing day by day, the pharmacists should look for steps beyond just compounding and dispensing. Though the community pharmacist’s role in public health (PH) has not well defined, they are certainly not new to PH. Albeit there is an increasing recognition of the contribution that community pharmacy can make to improve the PH, still there is a need to integrate pharmacy into the wider PH workforce.