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Doctors
misguided on drugs
Professor Tuly de Silva, President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Sri Lanka and the Institute of Chemistry said the practice in Sri Lanka was not only dangerous but also prevented most patients from getting maximum results from drugs at minimum costs. Addressing a general meeting of the National Movement for the Rights of Patients (NMRP), Prof. de Silva said that a fully qualified pharmacist played a key role in health care services guiding the doctor in the treatment of patients. But Sri Lanka faced a serious shortage of fully qualified pharmacists with degrees. Instead there were mainly half qualified pharmacists with only diplomas while hundreds of pharmacies in Sri Lanka were run with only sales people and this posed a deadly if not a fatal danger in health care services. Professor de Silva said the society and others had regularly appealed to the State health authorities to start more degree courses so that fully qualified pharmacists should play the role they should in public health care. But this has not been done. Mainly due to the lack of qualified pharmacists and State regulation and monitoring he said up to 30 percent of the medicinal drugs sold in Sri Lanka were substandard and thereby ineffective if not dangerous to patients. Professor de Silva said that hundreds of unnecessary or non-essential drugs were being imported thus making it virtually impossible to have a process of sustained quality control. He pointed out that about 50 varieties of paracetamol were being imported and sold under various brand names causing confusion in health care services, a drain of foreign exchange and other consequences. In addition there were many other scams such as the recent case where lorry loads of drugs were detected while some racketeers were changing the expiry date before the drugs were given to pharmacies. Prof. de Silva said that in addition to all the institutional ailments in the public health service, the monitoring process was also sick with most drug inspectors known to be unqualified if not incompetent. He said that bribery was also known to be rampant in this area and inspectors were known to do only superficial checks on the pharmacies and go away with some extra money in the pocket leaving spurious if not dangerous drugs on the shelf. He called on the NMRP to go all out in bringing about awareness among the people of the need to consult a qualified pharmacist so that patients could get maximum use from drugs and avoid dangers. He also urged doctors to work more in consultation with qualified pharmacists. The NMRP meeting held at the CSR hall in Colombo was also attended by eminent medical personalities such as Prof. Carlo Fonseka. |
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