Akademia e Farmacisë “Eureka”, founded by Prof. Ledjan Malaj, continues the tradition of the Malaj family and of the “Eureka” Shpk company, one of the first pharmacies and later a pharmaceutical distributor in Albania.
“Eureka” Shpk was founded in the early 1990s in the city of Elbasan to stand by the city’s patients in those difficult times, thanks to Baftjar Malaj, a pharmacist whose unsparing contribution spanned many fields.
As a public healthcare professional, he worked from the late 1960s until the early 1990s at various levels of the health system of the Elbasan region, improving services to the community.
After completing his higher education, and although he stood out as one of the most talented pharmacists of his generation in Tirana, he returned to Elbasan, choosing to serve the community of Cërrik for a time and later Elbasan once again. In the late 1970s he held the position of deputy head of the health section, where he made an essential contribution to building the health infrastructure of the city and the region, from health centres to the improvement of conditions in polyclinic and hospital facilities.
He also helped raise the level of human resources by creating opportunities for specialisation quotas and professional development for the health professionals of the city and the region. During this time he was also engaged in the further development of public health across the territory, making an important contribution to statistical registers, the monitoring of indicators and the hygiene measures so important for the community.
In the 1980s he took up the position of director of the pharmaceutical service for Elbasan and the whole region, an opportunity to make an even more specific contribution to the advancement of his profession as a pharmacist, something he had also done while serving on the executive committee. He fundamentally reorganised the pharmacy infrastructure, setting up around 30 pharmacies in the city of Elbasan and the region with a new concept, placing pharmacies in central positions within the community. It was an organic system that managed, within the possibilities of the time, to guarantee the citizens of Elbasan a quality similar to that of Tirana. This was recognised on several occasions by the institutions of the time, both for the directorate and for Baftjar Malaj himself, who received many awards during his life.
The pharmaceutical network of Elbasan stood out for creating pharmacies specialised in paediatric care, formalising traditional herbal pharmacy, and managing the distribution of services at several levels (from the pharmaceutical warehouse to local and hospital pharmacies). These were innovations for the time.
An essential factor in raising the quality of the service was the care taken over the professional and scientific development of human resources. Pharmacists from Elbasan often presented professional and scientific innovations and papers, precisely as a result of the spirit created by this director.
In the early 1990s, together with his colleagues, he sought to privatise the city’s pharmaceutical enterprise, making its employees shareholders and preserving the structure built over the years. This became impossible when the Ministry of Health at the time created the conditions for the fragmentation of the system, following the example of Law 7501 on the division of land among villagers. He was then removed from his position, and the pharmaceutical enterprise began to break up.
Those were difficult times, when it was hard for Albanians to access medicines and there were severe shortages. It was precisely in this period that he opened the first private pharmacy in Elbasan, cooperating with Swiss and Greek pharmaceutical companies, and later with partners from all over Europe. He later also opened the first pharmaceutical warehouse in Elbasan, which continued its activity until 2009.
Today Akademia e Farmacisë “Eureka” takes up this precious legacy with the aim of carrying it forward: helping pharmaceutical professionals deepen their knowledge, helping pharmacists respect and be respected in their profession, and helping the Albanian pharmaceutical sector meet the challenges of the 21st century with dignity.
