‘Better training, use of technology a must for safe medication practices’

Around half-a-million people in the country die annually due to medication errors. The situation requires immediate action as there is a dire need to adopt safe medication practices along with following prescribed rules and regulations while offering medicines to patients and sticking to international standards of medicine safety.

 “Around 80,000 people annually die in United States alone due to medication errors. We don’t have the actual data but it is estimated that four to five hundred thousand people die in Pakistan every year due to wrong administration of drugs and errors in medication,” said senior pharmacist and Pakistan Society of Health System Pharmacists (PSHP) president, Dr Abdul Latif Shaikh, while speaking at a news conference held at the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Tuesday.

Central Drug Testing Laboratory (CDL) chief Saif-ur-Rehman Khattak, National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) chief pharmacist Jibran Bin Yousuf, Umaimah Muzzamil and other pharmacists were also present on the occasion.

The PSHP president said that his organisation would hold its 2nd International Conference on ‘Quality, Safety and Outcome; A Paradigm Shift in Pharmacy’ to address the growing issue of medication errors in Pakistan, administration of safe drugs and provision of quality medicines to patients.

The conference would be held on Saturday in Karachi and it would be attended by hundreds of pharmacists, doctors, educationists and international experts, he added.

“Two world renowned experts, namely Prof Henri R Manasse Jr from the University of Illinois Chicago and Jacqueline Surugue from France, are arriving in Karachi for the first time to speak about the international practices in the field of pharmacy and how the situation in Pakistan can be improved by adopting international practices,” Dr Shaikh said.

He maintained that pharmacists were not being given due role in the healthcare system and despite their induction at hospitals, they were not being consulted about prescription of drugs, and its dosage.

“Sindh has recently inducted hundreds of pharmacists at hospitals and it is hoped that they would be allowed to use their knowledge and skills in dealing with issues of medication and administration of safe and quality drugs to the patients,” he maintained.

Dr Shaikh deplored that there was no system of reporting the adverse effects of drugs, neither for the patients nor for the doctors.

“Our conference would prove to be a landmark in covering these issues, creating awareness among people about safe administration of drugs and reporting any problem to the authorities in case of any reaction so other people could be prevented from serious health issues,” he added.

CDL chief Dr Saif-ur-Rehman Khattak said the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) had improved the number of federal inspectors of drugs in Karachi.

Raids were being carried out to seize spurious drugs and other measures were being taken to prevent the people from consuming counterfeit drugs, he added.

NICVD chief pharmacist Jibran Bin Yousuf said radical measures were being taken at the cardiovascular diseases’ hospital to introduce an IT system to improve administration of drugs.