Pharmacists Urge FG To Regulate Online Health Influencers

Pharmacists have called on the Federal Government to regulate individuals posing as health experts online and promoting unproven drugs and herbal products to Nigerians.

The call was made at the 7th Annual Scientific Conference of the West African Postgraduate College of Pharmacists, FCT Zone, held in Abuja with the theme, ‘Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Innovative Pharmaceutical Research and Practice: The Emerging Role of Consultant Pharmacists.’

Speaking at the event, the Keynote speaker, Pharm. Valentine Adegoke, said the rise of “online doctors” and “online pharmacists” poses a major risk to public health because many of them lack formal training.

Adegoke explained that qualified doctors, nurses and pharmacists know the limits of information they can give, but a growing number of untrained influencers are taking advantage of social media.
“They are not doctors, they are not pharmacists, they are not nurses. They are just always on air, promoting herbal samples, promoting this, promoting that. Telling you to use an item that it has not been proven, it’s not certified,” he said.

He said most of them operate without a known address and cannot be traced, adding that the College is working to track them and push for government regulation.
“Not because we want to stifle them from making the trend where they generate their money, but they cannot be talking about what they don’t know,” he added.

Speakers at the conference also discussed the role of Artificial Intelligence in pharmacy. Adegoke noted that AI has advantages in research, adverse drug reaction tracking and hospital data analysis, but must be guided by consultant pharmacists to ensure reliability.
“AI doesn’t discriminate. It brings out the data you fed into it to produce the result. To ensure that this result is genuine, reliable, that is when consultant pharmacists are to come in,” he said.

While giving her presentation on ‘Emerging Trends in Medication Safety and Patient Protection’, Former Head Pharmacy Department, National Hospital, Dr. Adetutu Ajemigbitse, said traditional manual review of patient records can no longer suffice because of the volume of data.

She said AI can assist consultant pharmacists in ensuring patient safety, especially with drug-drug interactions and pharmacovigilance, by flagging duplications, interactions and contraindications for patients with multi-morbidity who are on multiple medications.

She cautioned that AI is only a co-pilot and not a replacement for professionals, urged healthcare professionals to validate AI outputs and to position themselves for necessary training in the AI era.

“AI is just acting as a co-pilot, an assistant, not replacing the professional… AI can hallucinate, it can give biased information or information that is outrightly incorrect based on the data that was fed into it. So, poor data, poor output,” she said.

Also speaking, Zonal Coordinator of WAPCP FCT Zone, Pharm. Dr. Tijani Murtau, said the conference was part of the college’s mandate of training and retraining.

He stressed that “AI has come to stay and you just have to align with it,” but added that it cannot replace pharmacists.

On his part, Registrar of the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, Pharm. Ibrahim Babashehu Ahmed, said the council supports AI adoption to enhance professional service delivery, but responsibility for ethical use rests with pharmacists.

Also speaking, Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Chapter of WAPCP, Pharm. Ruth Ajayi, said pharmacists should embrace AI as it enhances their work, but stressed the need for human oversight and quality checks to avoid errors from mismatched data.

The Controller of Corrections, the Nigeria Correctional Service Headquarters, Pharm. Abdulganiyu Ayandeji Ayandiran,who was the special Guest of Honour of the event, explained that AI is important in drug production and quality control as it improves precision, speed, and safety from raw materials to packaging.

Also speaking, the Immediate Past Zonal Coordinator of the College, Dr. Abubakar Danraka, explained that 22 new fellows were inducted at the event.

He also added that Appreciation Awards were presented to the Chairman of the Occasion, Keynote Speaker and Sub-theme Speaker, while an Award of Outstanding Leadership was presented to him, and other past Executive Committee members of the zone were presented with an Award of Excellent Service.