BRAC University’s School of Pharmacy marked World Pharmacists Day 2026 at its Merul Badda campus in Dhaka on Thursday with a Pharma Olympiad, debate competition, video and poster competitions, and a cultural program.
Established by the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP), World Pharmacists Day 2026 will be observed on Friday under the global theme “Empowering pharmacists for healthier futures.”
Addressing a seminar on the occasion, Arshad M Chowdhury, pro-vice-chancellor at BRAC University, called for a rethink of pharmacy curricula, noting that universities abroad have already advanced the use of nanorobots to administer drugs at the cellular level.
Professor Dr Sharmind Neelotpol, chairperson of the Department of Pharmacy, delivered the keynote address. She said empowering the profession required modernizing the curriculum, expanding career pathways and aligning academia, industry and regulators to turn research capacity into workforce readiness.
The Pharmacy Council of Bangladesh needs to set standards for registering and grading practicing pharmacists, formulating curricula and defining the profession’s scope of practice, she said.
Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) needs to develop a regulatory framework for drug licensing and market surveillance to achieve higher World Health Organization-level regulatory maturity, she added.
Bangladesh’s drug manufacturers should provide bioequivalence data for locally supplied medicines, as they do for exports, so patients can switch between brand-name drugs and generic alternatives, suggested DGDA Director General (Additional Secretary) Md Alamgir Hossain.
M Mohibuz Zaman, managing director and CEO of ACI HealthCare Limited, said establishing active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing facilities was not feasible in Bangladesh because competitor countries benefit from economies of scale.
Qudsiykausar Shahbaz Shaikh of the strategic product development wing of Renata PLC said the government needs to incentivize API manufacturing capacity, while students need to sharpen their soft skills and universities need to narrow the gap in research output with institutions abroad.
Chief guest Professor Dr Md Aslam Hossain, member of the University Grants Commission of Bangladesh, suggested that pharmacists take on a more patient-oriented role.