Product traceability and GS1 codes for Nigerian pharmacies
What Nigeria's healthcare product traceability system means for a pharmacy or supplier, and where GTINs and GLNs fit in its stock records today.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Healthcare businesses in Nigeria
A box of antimalarials on a pharmacy shelf in Kano has travelled a long way: from a manufacturer, through an importer or distributor, perhaps a wholesaler in Onitsha, to the shop. If a batch turns out to be substandard or falsified, everyone in that chain needs to know quickly where the affected packs went. For most of Nigeria's history, answering that question meant phone calls and paper invoices.
Nigeria's national traceability system for healthcare products is meant to change that, using global identification standards maintained by GS1. For a community pharmacy, a hospital pharmacy or a medical supplier, the practical questions are what the codes are, where they appear in day-to-day stock records, and what to do now. This article explains the main GS1 identifiers, what GS1 Nigeria says about the national system, and how they relate to stock kept in Achekam today.
The national system and patient safety
GS1 Nigeria says it supports the deployment of global standards for Nigeria's national traceability system for healthcare products, providing data to support pharmacovigilance and patient safety. It also publishes pharmaceutical traceability and regulatory compliance effective dates.
Those dates are the first thing to find. Check whether they differ by product type or by your role in the supply chain, since a manufacturer, an importer and a retail pharmacy do very different things with a pack. Then ask your suppliers what they are doing to meet the dates that apply to them. The GS1 Nigeria website is where it publishes those effective dates, along with its services for barcodes and the identifiers described below.
GTINs: one number per trade item
GS1 states that a company can use the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) to uniquely identify all of its trade items. For a pharmacy, that makes the GTIN the natural identity for each product it buys and sells, and the number to ask a supplier for when setting up a new line.
GS1 publishes a GTIN Management Standard for all sectors, plus sector-specific GTIN allocation rules for healthcare and for fresh foods. The healthcare rules matter mainly to manufacturers and brand owners, who decide when a change to a product needs a new GTIN. For a pharmacy, the takeaway is simpler: treat the GTIN as the product's identity, and expect it to change when the product changes.
GLNs: who and where
GS1 Nigeria describes the Global Location Number (GLN) as a globally unique GS1 identification key used to identify parties and locations, answering "who" and "where" within an organisation and across the global supply chain.
For a pharmacy business, GLNs can identify the company itself and each physical place it holds stock: the main shop, a branch, a store room, a hospital ward store. In a traceability system, the GLN is how a shipment's movement from one location to another is recorded.
Verified by GS1
GS1 Nigeria explains that Verified by GS1 represents each product, company and location with an "ID card" of a small set of attributes held in the GS1 Registry Platform, which business partners and government entities can query globally. For a buyer, that offers a way to check that a product's GTIN or a supplier's GLN is genuinely registered to the company that claims it, which is a useful step when you are offered stock by an unfamiliar distributor.
How this fits stock records in Achekam today
Achekam's stock records were not built around GS1 identifiers, and it is worth being exact about what they can and cannot hold.
Items. The Item Master in the Accounting menu lists and creates products on the server with SKU, name, category, selling and cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment. It needs the Point of Sale, Warehousing or Wholesale add-on.
Barcodes. No screen yet lets a business record a product's barcode separately. A scanner at the till finds a product only when the scanned code matches its SKU. A pharmacy that wants scanning to work can therefore use each product's GTIN as its SKU, so the scan and the SKU match, provided the barcode on the pack carries that same number. Decide that before you load your items, because changing SKUs later is disruptive. Item set-up more generally is covered in setting up dispensary items before the first sale.
Locations. With the Warehousing add-on, a business keeps stock locations, such as stores, bins and vans, on the server, with the quantity on hand at each. A pharmacy can set up each branch and store room as its own location, and keep a short list matching each one to its GLN.
What Achekam does not do is exchange traceability data with the national system or with the GS1 Registry Platform. Any reporting the system requires is done through the channels GS1 Nigeria and the authorities specify. How batch codes support recalls in a manufacturing setting is discussed in batch codes and tracing a faulty product run.
Steps for a pharmacy or supplier now
- Find GS1 Nigeria's published effective dates for your role in the supply chain.
- Ask your main suppliers how their products are identified and whether their GTINs are registered.
- Decide whether to use GTINs as SKUs for the products you scan at the till, and set your items up accordingly.
- List your physical stock locations and find out whether each needs a GLN.
- Keep supplier invoices and delivery notes in good order, so you can say which packs came from whom if a recall is issued.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
