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.

The 2025 edition is the eighth annual World Pharmacy Council Sector Analysis report. It provides an overview of community pharmacy practice, regulation, trends, opportunities, research and statistics focused primarily on the twelve WPC member countries as at September 2025 – Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and United States of America. References to other OECD countries are also included.

The feature section of this 2025 edition relates to the Economic and Social Value of Community Pharmacy. By quantifying the effect community pharmacies and community pharmacy services have on overall health system costs, health outcomes and economic productivity, the community pharmacy sector can ensure it is viewed not as as a cost centre but as critical healthcare infrastructure to secure and expand. The feature section highlights evidence generated through major studies in countries such as Portugal, Finland, and the United Kingdom - each demonstrating, in monetary terms, the substantial positive effect that community pharmacies have (and can have) on health systems, budgets and the economy.

The World Pharmacy Council has published a new position statement on Dispensing & Core Funding. Dispensing is a critical clinical service that ensures the safe, effective, and rational use of medicines in the community. Pharmacists play a vital professional role in patient engagement and clinical review, identifying medication-related issues and initiating interventions. Underfunding this core service compromises patient care, threatens the viability of local community pharmacies, and increases pressure on the entire healthcare system.

Call to Action 

The World Pharmacy Council calls on policymakers to:

• Recognise prescription dispensing as a crucial clinical service.
• Invest in community pharmacy as a strategic public health asset to build more accessible, efficient, and resilient healthcare systems.
• Secure the future of patient care by ensuring community pharmacy funding models incorporate essential elements of viability, responsiveness, equity, separation, and efficiency.

The 2024 edition is the seventh annual World Pharmacy Council Sector Analysis report.

The full report is available only to WPC members. A limited public-release version can be accessed below. This includes parts of the 2024 edition's feature section relating to core funding for community pharmacy and related economic pressures.

The 2023 edition is the sixth annual World Pharmacy Council Sector Analysis report.

The full report is available only to WPC members. A limited public-release version can be accessed below. This includes parts of the 2023 edition's feature section, a Global showcase of the best of community pharmacy from around the world.

Prepared by the World Pharmacy Council this report examines the development of vaccination services in pharmacies, their contribution to the use of vaccinations to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, and the arguments for expanding community pharmacy vaccinations as a measure to improve health services sustainability through better use of professional resources.

The accompanying development guide has been created to help community pharmacies to plan, establish and successfully operate vaccination services.

The World Pharmacy Council is grateful to Pfizer Inc. for its financial support for the preparation of these resources. 

The full report and guide are available to WPC member organisations and are availalbe on request to others - please contact us to express your interest. Overview versions can be accessed below.

The 2022 edition is the fifth annual World Pharmacy Council Sector Analysis report.

The report provides an overview of community pharmacy practice, regulation, trends, opportunities, research and statistics focused primarily on WPC member counties as at November 2022.

The full report is only available through the WPC member portal. A limited verions can be seen below.

The 2021 edition is the fourth annual World Pharmacy Council Sector Analysis report. The report provides an overview of community pharmacy practice, regulation, trends, opportunities, research and statistics focused primarily on WPC member countries as at August 2021.

The full report is only available through the WPC member portal. A limited version can be seen below.

World Pharmacy Council President, George Tambassis said: 'Im almost all WPC member countries community pharmacies already have a significant and expanding role in administering vaccinations for influenza and other diseases. For COVID-19 vaccines that are amendable to administration in primary care settings, community pharmacy must be included as an integral part of each country's national immunisation strategy. 

Involvement of community pharmacy will save lives and accelerate the economic recovery, as the timeframe for reaching target population coverage of the vaccines will be significantly shorter with community pharmacy involvement then without it.'

The importance of maintaining a viable, well-distributed, highly accessible network of community pharmacies, with staff enabled to operate at their full scope of professional expertise, has never been clearer than now. The 2020 WPC Sector Analysis Special Edition illuminates the vital frontline role of community pharmacy during the COVID-19 pandemic, examines the learnings so far, and makes recommendations for the future.

The World Pharmacy Council examined measurment of adherence at its meeting in March 2019 and agreed to advocae the use of the Proportion of Days Covered method for adherence measurement using pharmacy dispensing records.

Note: The full version of the Sector Analysis report is available to member organisations only.

About this report:
The 2019 edition is the second annual World Pharmacy Council Sector Analysis report. The report provides an overview of community pharmacy practice, regulation, trends, opportunities, research and statistic focused primarily on the 10 WPC member countries as at July 2019 - Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom and United States of America. References to other developed countries are also included, particularly in the statistics sections. The report will be updated and extended in future years as new members join the WPC.

The report is only available through the WPC member portal. The Table of Contents can be seen below.

2019 Edition Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION: Chief Economist's Overview
• SECTION 1: Summary of community pharmacy in each WPC country
• SECTION 2: Community Pharmacy Trends, Issues and Opportunities
• SECTION 3: National Health Priorities
• SECTION 4: Community Pharmacy Research Highlights
• SECTION 5: Economic & Business Conditions
• SECTION 6: Pharmacy Services & Scope
• SECTION 7: Biosimiliar Medicines - Policies & Uptake
• SECTION 8: Location, Accessibility & Geographical Distribution
• SECTION 9: Electronic Health Initiatives & Systems
• SECTION 10: Regulation of Internet, Mail Order and Cross-Border Medicine Sales
• SECTION 11: Health System Statistics & Outcomes

Click below to download a summary of the World Pharmacy Coucil's 2018 Sector Analysis Report.

Community Pharmacy Sector Analysis 2018 Global Trends and Opportunities in Community Pharmacy.

Note: The full version of the annual Sector Analysis report is available to member organisations only.

APB is the 

federation of independent Belgian community pharmacists.

The Association of Finnish Pharmacies represents privately owned, pharmacist-run pharmacies.

The Danish Pharmacies Association is pharmacy's employer and trade association in Denmark.

The Japan Pharmaceutical Association is a professional organisation representing approximately 100,000 pharmacists working across a wide range of fields throughout Japan.

The Israel Pharmacists Association unites private pharmacy owners all over Israel and has about 500 members located all over the country.

The General Council of Spanish Pharmacists represents the pharmacy professional at the national and international level.

The National Community Pharmacists Association represents pharmacist owners, managers, and employees of more than 22,000 independent community pharmacies across the United States.

PLEASE NOTE BEFORE COMPLETING THIS FORM:

If you are an individual, please note that membership of the World Pharmacy Council is not available to individuals. The Council's full members are community pharmacy representative organisations, and application for affiliate membership is open only to companies and other organisations that have an interest in the field of community pharmacy.