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Foreword

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently adopted a policy that advocates universal health coverage for all. A key challenge facing the ability to provide such universal health coverage and ensure best health for patients is to ensure a sufficient and appropriately educated health workforce. An integral part of this health workforce, are those who provide pharmaceutical and/or medicines expertise. The challenges our global pharmacy community faces as a result of serving more patients are to prepare:

pharmaceutical graduates that are relevant and competent to bring value to a nation s health care system and its populations; people with medicines expertise to be leading members of society and the Health care team; sufficient numbers of medicines experts in every country, developed in the context of national and regional policies and needs. As the global educational and professional leadership body, the purpose of the FIP Education Initiative (FIPEd) is to assure a competent and sufficient pharmacy workforce that can encourage responsible medicines use to achieve improved health. To be able to effectively improve health we need responsible medicines use, from the starting point of development of new medicines to the endpoint of responsible use of medicines in patients. Comprehensive medicines expertise (e.g. basic and applied sciences and clinical) is needed in order to provide appropriate care to patients using medicines.

Advancement of our profession, of pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists and educators, is strongly dependent on robust, and contemporary education programs for initial and lifetime education. We need universities to provide quality education and engage in a socially accountable manner to serve the needs of individual patients and the society as a whole. Moreover, there needs to be a strong alignment between the outcomes of pharmacy and pharmaceutical education and the overall health needs of nations.

This 2013 FIPEd Global Education Report is the first publication of its kind to provide a baseline on the current status, transformation and scaling up of pharmaceutical education worldwide. We share this knowledge from our Members, to our Members and beyond, to trigger dialogue and action towards stronger policies and education for health. We hope that this will stimulate collaboration between all stakeholders, including professional organisations and universities taking up the important role of advocating education reform at the national level.

Henri R. Manasse Jr, PhD, ScD (Hon), FFIP FIP Education Initiative (FIPEd) Steering Committee Chair