The World Pharmacy Council has published a new position statement on Pharmacy-Based Vaccination. Vaccination is one of the most effective and cost-effective public health interventions to prevent disease and protect communities. It also has important roles in supporting health outcomes, health system resilience, economic productivity, and antimicrobial stewardship. However, vaccination rates in many countries remain below the levels needed to fully optimise public health benefits and prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease. Closing this gap requires a full system response, including making full use of the trusted, highly qualified healthcare professionals already embedded in communities across the world.

The position statement includes the following Call to Action.

Call to Action 

1.    Governments should engage, empower and promote community pharmacies as local preventive health hubs, facilitating inclusion in administration programmes across a broad range of vaccines.

2.    Trained community pharmacists in all countries should progressively be authorised to administer vaccinations against a full range of vaccine-preventable diseases, according to the national vaccination schedule, for patients of all clinically appropriate ages. Where a vaccine requires a prescription, patients should be able to have a vaccine administered in a pharmacy without requiring a prescription from another healthcare professional.

3.    Vaccination training should be incorporated into pharmacy university courses at the undergraduate level and community pharmacy organisations should be empowered, in collaboration with health authorities, to offer certified vaccination training programmes.

4.    Community pharmacies, and their representative organisations, should be integrated into local outbreak preparedness, and response arrangements to natural disasters and serious health threats, including the rapid delivery of vaccination services in urgent and high-risk situations.

5.    Community pharmacies should have access to publicly funded vaccine supply through procurement channels that are compatible with, and make use of, standard pharmacy workflows.

6.    Community pharmacies should be provided with access to view a patient's vaccination history to ensure safety and identify catch-up opportunities, as well as to add to and update records with vaccines administered in the pharmacy.

7.    Governments and other bodies involved in collecting vaccination data should ensure regular, timely and publicly accessible reporting of high-quality data on vaccination administration, disaggregated by relevant factors including geography, vaccination venue type and patient age, to enable transparent monitoring and evidence-based decision making. Community pharmacies can actively contribute to this objective.

8.    Where vaccination services are funded wholly or in part by a third party (government or insurer), full, fair and timely reimbursement and remuneration arrangements must be provided for the vaccine and the clinical service. Where equivalent vaccination services are funded when delivered by other providers, pharmacies should be eligible for equivalent funding and operational arrangements. Adequate and sustainable payment for vaccination-related activities is essential to ensure feasibility, support uptake, and appropriately recognise the responsibilities assumed.