Pharmacy In Pharmacy

Numerous findings of our research study point to the necessity and the possibility of involving private retail pharmacies in TB control in Pakistan. For many patients with chest signs and symptoms, retail pharmacies seem to be first contact with the health system. The pharmacy staff had insufficient knowledge about the DOTS facility and they referred the suspected TB patients to specialized chest physician instead of TB-DOTS centre. Interestingly a considerable number of TB patients purchased anti-TB drugs from the private retail pharmacies despite the presence of free of cost good quality drugs at the DOTS centres. This seems to be due to the insufficient information about DOTS, and pharmacies have a great potential to contribute towards this

This becomes related in the context of the prevailing drug resistance patterns in the society. Thus, in containing the problem of resistance there is an urgent need to adopt strict measures on the sale of antibiotics and anti-TB drugs by the government. One of the reasons for this could be the lack of involvement of private providers in the programme in the DOTS area.

This research study also revealed that all of the retail pharmacy staff working at different community pharmacies were males and this can be correlated to social and cultural factors in this region of Pakistan where gender roles define that females do not generally participate in sales and marketing professions. This could have some implications in the interaction of the staff with the female patients/ TB suspects and it would be an advantage to have some balance in the gender distribution of the pharmacy

But our study findings suggest, though, that anti-TB drugs are more commonly sold with a prescription of the doctors. The majority of anti-TB drugs present in the pharmacies were fixed dose combinations of either four or two first line anti-TB drugs, thereby reducing the probability of over-the-counter delivery of antibiotics. Furthermore personal observation provided no clue of drugs from the NTP being present in the private pharmacies for sale. However, the results of the previous study showed that more than 1/3rd of the pharmacy staff dispensed medicines without a doctor`s prescription without specifying the sale of anti-TB drugs (64). The study also showed that less than 50% TB patients bought full treatment course. Possible explainations could be poverty, lack of knowledge about the importance of complete