Around 25 new pharmacy institutes will open in the Maharashtra state this academic year due to popularity of pharmacy courses among students.

The rising demand has encouraged institutes to apply for new colleges. Each college will have an intake of 60 seats taking the total number of seats to 1,500 seats more this year.

Regional director of technical education, Dilip Nandanwar, said that in the past few years, the number of applications for pharmacy courses is more than the intake capacity. Also, engineering seats are lying vacant. And it clearly shows that the candidates are more inclined towards pharmacy due to the industry demands and better job opportunities.

Nandanwar said as a result of these demand colleges in the state are keen to start courses in pharmacy and depending on their capability, their applications to start the course was approved by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).

Apart from 25 colleges in Maharashtra, the AICTE has given approval to 842 institutions resulting to a total of 2, 62,698 diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate seats in 3,726 pharmacy institutes in the country.

Maharashtra has 438 pharma colleges and the scope was enormous in pharmacy research as well as marketing. Experts also say that pharmacy is a diverse and rewarding career, with opportunities for patient care, scientific research and innovation. Pharmacists can work in several professional settings, work independently or retail chains. Pharmacists also work in hospitals, nursing homes, managed care organizations, the pharmaceutical industry, and with government agencies.

Also, a TOI report in January said that the Pharmacy Council of India had announced its decision to revise the syllabus for pharmacy courses to keep abreast of new trends in medical sciences.

B Suresh, President of the council, had said that research was an important component of education. The council’s website was to be updated with the latest syllabus, expert lectures, references and sources by May 2019. He also said that all universities in Maharashtra should accept the course designed by the council which coordinated with the universities in Maharashtra for revisions.

He further said the council is in the process of introducing a centralized system to detect fake pharmacists. The pharmacist registration tracking system was a fool-proof mechanism and was ready for implementation as they will have to register with the central government making it easy to spot fake pharmacists.

An additional TOI report in the same month said the Doctor of Pharmacy Association wanted the government to create posts of ‘clinical pharmacists’ in hospitals as per the patient ratio. The Pharm D course was started in 2008 for clinical pharmacists to improve patient care in the country. Only two are government colleges — at Aurangabad and Amravati — while rest all are private colleges out of the 233 colleges. Almost, 30,000 students are appearing for the degree course this year.