General Pharmaceutical Council determination — substantive hearing
GPhC ordered Mobolaji Onafuwa's removal over online prescribing failures
The committee found limited insight and a risk of serious harm after reviewing prescribing during 2019. It rejected improper financial motivation and found no evidence that he caused actual harm.
MedicWatch editorial · Published 23 October 2024 · Updated 22 September 2026
Erasure (struck off the register)
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The regulator directed removal from the register in this decision. The decision explains when the direction takes effect and any appeal provisions. Check the official register for the practitioner's current registration status.
Concerning Mobolaji Adeyinka Onafuwa, pharmacist (General Pharmaceutical Council 2053101).
Decision date: 23 October 2024 · Hearing started 13 May 2024 and ended 23 October 2024
In plain English
The GPhC committee ordered Mobolaji Adeyinka Onafuwa's removal in October 2024 after finding serious failures in online prescribing during 2019. It found limited insight and a risk of repetition and serious harm, but rejected improper financial motivation and found no evidence that he caused actual harm. The committee recognised his patient-safety concerns and previous professional work. An interim suspension applied while the removal decision awaited effect, subject to appeal.
Charges
The allegations concerned prescribing at UK Meds between May and October 2019, involving at least 7,684 prescriptions for high-risk medicines or medicines requiring monitoring. They alleged inadequate clinical information, reliance on unverified questionnaires, missing consultations and medical records, insufficient checks for dependence, inadequate monitoring and safety-netting, and insufficient time to assess requests. The alleged transactional approach was defined as questionnaire-based prescribing contrary to guidance, not financial motivation.
Findings
The committee found all factual particulars proved, serious misconduct and impaired fitness to practise. It found limited insight, no significant evidence of remediation of attitudinal failings, and a risk of repetition and serious harm. It expressly rejected improper financial motivation and found no evidence that the registrant caused actual harm: medicine prescribed to the patient discussed in detail did not reach her. The committee ordered removal and immediate interim suspension pending the substantive order taking effect. The cover states an effective date of 22 November 2024, subject to any appeal.
Mitigating and aggravating factors
Mitigating factors
a. His professional past work including that of being a pharmacist prescriber working within a GP practice both before he worked at UK Meds and subsequently, over which time no concerns have been reported against him to the regulator. The committee has limited information about his past practise including at the GP practice. What information it has has emerged in his statements to the committee during Stage 1 and the documentation he provided. The documentation includes a substantial amount of written reflective learning written by him, and some documents he has written following peer review. His documentation also includes a review of his work against the RPS Competency Framework undertaken in December 2023 by the GP with whom he worked: the review contains little narrative by the GP beyond writing “Yes” against nearly all of the competencies. What information the committee has suggests that the concerns and failings identified by the committee in his online practise did not emerge in his practise at the GP practice. For example, his documentation includes a detailed reflective report expressing his concern about patients who had been on an opioid-based pain-killer for more than three months, and steps he took within the GP practice to identify such patients, review their medication, and move them on to alternative medication with ongoing monitoring and review. The document is not dated but the Registrant’s statement to the committee was that it was written within the past five years. The committee has not had the opportunity of hearing sworn evidence from professionals working with the Registrant to report on his prescribing practise within the traditional setting. b. His oral statements to the committee acknowledging that he would not prescribe in such a way again or if he had known what he knows now particularly in relation to Patient 10. The committee reviewed this when assessing his level of insight. His statements suggest he has some understanding that what occurred was wrong. However, despite the committee questioning the Registrant, his motives for his statements remain somewhat unclear, particularly whether he now realises what he did was wrong or whether he simply now anticipates that such actions can result in regulatory action. As with assessing his insight, the committee’s task in assessing mitigation is complicated by his inconsistent statements. For example, his documentation includes a letter written by the Registrant to the Professional Standards Authority dated 7/1/2024 in which he complains about the conduct of the GPhC but also writes “I fully accept the role I inadvertently played …within the now discredited Questionnaire-based Online Prescribing Platform…and I fully accept the need for…some form of sanction”, a statement that contradicts the defensive line he adopted at Stage 1, justifying his actions and commending the UK Meds patient Questionnaire. c. He left UK Meds after nearly 5 months. There is evidence that whilst he worked at UK Meds he raised with UK Meds concerns regarding patient-safety and proposed improvements to the patient Questionnaire: emails seen by the committee evidence his actions in this regard. Ultimately, he chose to leave UK Meds despite the fact that he thereby lost the opportunity to earn substantial sums of money. There is evidence that before leaving, the rate at which he refused or referred patient prescriptions to the Clinical Leads increased, suggestive of his concerns about patient safety, albeit he continued to issue prescriptions for high-risk medicines and/or medicines requiring ongoing monitoring up to the time he left. This increased rate of refusing and referring led him to receiving less work from UK Meds. Whether he left UK Meds primarily because of the reduction in work allocated to him or because of his patient safety concerns is less than clear, but the committee gives him the benefit of a degree of mitigation given that he did in fact leave UK Meds.
Aggravating factors
a. The nature of the medication for which he has issued prescriptions, namely high- risk medicines and/or medicines requiring ongoing monitoring. They consisted entirely of Prescription Only Medicines (‘POMs’). They included Controlled Drugs of Schedules 3, 4 and 5 including drugs liable to abuse, misuse or overuse, including addictive properties, for example, opioid-based painkillers. The prescriptions also included POMs that were not Controlled Drugs but considered high-risk because of the potential for serious side-effects and the risk of toxicity. The prescriptions also included other drugs which, though not necessarily habit- forming or liable to abuse, misuse or overuse, had the potential for presenting a risk to patients for a number of reasons, and required, for example, the need for ongoing monitoring in order to maintain patient safety. b. The number of prescriptions for high-risk medicines and/or medicines requiring ongoing monitoring issued being “a least 7,684” which the committee regards as a very substantial and significant number, representing many patients affected by the Registrant’s prescribing practise. c. Of these prescriptions, a significant number were for repeat prescriptions when the Registrant was issuing a prescription to patients who had already received earlier prescriptions, sometimes many prescriptions over many months. d. The degree of risk of harm that emerges from his prescribing practise. The committee is particularly concerned with the prescriptions issued for opioid- based painkillers that risked dependency and addiction. The harm that can then follow, to patients, their families and to society more widely, can be very serious given the use of opioid-based painkillers may lead to dependency and addiction. The circumstances of Patient 10 illustrate the very significant public concern that rightly arises from the Registrant’s practise of prescribing such medication without adequate patient and clinical information or appropriate safe-guards including safety-netting. The committee’s concerns extend beyond the opioid- based painkillers but to all the high-risk drugs given the risk of harm that they carry. The committee is similarly concerned with the medicines prescribed requiring ongoing monitoring to ensure patient safety: ongoing monitoring arrangements were not clearly in place giving rise to a significant risk of serious harm to patients. e. That there were a range of failings in the Registrant’s process of prescribing. This included his reliance on self-report patient Questionnaires, the absence of face- to-face consultation, the absence of access to appropriate clinical records, the failure to consider the risk of dependence or misuse, and the failure to ensure continuity of care through appropriate review, monitoring and safety-netting. f. Given the range of failings referred to above, there was no effective assessment of patient vulnerabilities and therefore no mitigation against the risk of harm that could come to vulnerable patients. g. That this misconduct was not momentary but was repeated over a period of nearly five months. h. The failure to be aware of, or comply with, relevant guidance documents including guidance issued by the Registrant’s own professional body and by his regulatory body. i. The number of professional standards breached – the committee has identified wide-ranging breaches of six standards out of the nine standards set by the regulator. j. Allied to the breaches of standards, the circumstances of the case are aggravated by the committee’s concerns regarding the Registrant’s attitudinal failings, including the following. k. His failure to deliver patient-centred care: he depersonalised patients by relying on patient Questionnaires, without engaging with patients in two-way dialogue; by his belief that face-to-face consultations were “redundant” and his belief in his ability to visualise patients like a “cyborg” in order to conduct a clinical assessment of them; and by his making of assumptions about patients. l. His attitude of prescribing medication unless he identified a reason not to do so, rather than understanding his professional responsibility to justify each prescription he issued, including in the context of repeat prescriptions. m. His attitude to applying his own approach to risk, including assessing the risk that different drugs presented and patient risk, approaches that were out of line with professional guidance. n. His inadequate insight. The committee is concerned by his inadequate insight. His inadequate insight emerges particularly from his attitudinal failings that signal an attitude that he ‘knows best’ and his attitude that he did no wrong. These attitudes were sustained throughout Stage 1 when the Registrant robustly defended himself against the allegations and maintained he knew what he was doing, and has been sustained into more recent communications from him when he has expressed an anticipation of being “exonerated”. It is now five years since the events of this case: it is of concern that over that time the Registrant has not been able to reflect to the point that he could accept a degree of responsibility and accountability for what occurred. Indeed, it is an aggravating feature that rather than accept his professional responsibility, he has pointed blame at the GPhC and other professionals including Patient 10’s GP. Given the extent of his attitudinal failings and the concerns regarding his insight, the committee concludes that he has shown entrenched poor professional and clinical judgement.
Source
All facts on this page are drawn from the publicly published General Pharmaceutical Council determination linked below. MedicWatch does not editorialise the regulator’s findings.
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