Community health practitioners’ certificates, licenses for verification nationwide

The Registrar/CEO, Community Health Practitioners Registration Board of Nigeria (CHPRBN), Alhaji Bashir Idris has urged community health practitioners to get ready their licenses and certificates as nationwide document verification will commence next month. 

Addressing a one-day refresher training on revised standing order/code of professional conducts, ethics and etiquettes, organised in Kaduna on Monday by the National Association of Community Health Practitioners of Nigeria, Kaduna state council in collaboration with the Kaduna State Primary Health Care Development Agency, the Registrar said the verification exercise would start on February 7 and run till February 12 nationwide. 

He said the practitioners whose license has expired should go and renew it, while those who are yet to collect their certificate from their institutions should endeavour to do so, as the verification exercise, which aimed at removing quacks from the profession and ensuring that the required professional standard is maintained, will take place to achieve its aims. 

“The verification is nationwide not only in Kaduna state. It would take place across the country next month. So, if you are a community health practitioner and you have not collected your certificate, go back to your school and collect it, if your license has expired, go and renew it because you will have no excuse not to provide them when you are called upon to do so.”

The Registrar CEO tasked the community health practitioners to rise up and defend their profession among their other colleagues in the health field and not yield to  inferiority complex or oppression that tends to dampen their morale, noting that they and medical doctors are the only two sets of health practitioners legally allowed to prescribe drugs for patients in health facilities. He noted that the standing order serves as guide and legal protection for them in their practice.