Hospitals lack pharmacists

The National Drug Policy (NDP) is not being implemented in any of the major city hospitals, Pakistan Today has learnt. The NDP guidelines are being violated as none of the public hospitals across the city is maintaining the standard ratio of one pharmacist for fifty beds, which is affecting the patients and young pharmacy graduates coming into the field.
The section number 8.2 of the National Drug Policy states, “It will be the policy objective of the government that the scheme of scientific hospital pharmacy shall be introduced in the country both under the federal and provincial governments. In order to provide efficient health care service, hospital pharmacists shall be appointed in all the hospitals of the country at the rate of one pharmacist for each fifty beds. Efforts will be made to increase the availability of qualified pharmacists for this purpose.
The Hospital Pharmacy System will be properly organised on scientific lines under the supervision of graduate pharmacists. They will be assigned with specific duties to provide an efficient drug supply system and where possible a limited production of pharmaceuticals. Model Hospital Pharmacies shall be set up in each federal and provincial government teaching hospital in line with the system in any developed country to set an example for the others to follow.”
As implied in the policy, pharmacists play vital role in managing the inflow of drugs in the hospitals, auditing the usage of the drugs and crosschecking the medicine prescribed to the patients. The lack of induction of pharmacists in hospitals is becoming a growing problem for patients and as well as the young pharmacy graduates due to lack of job opportunities.
Senior doctors from all over the city claim that many problems shall be eliminated with the induction of proper number of pharmacists in public hospitals. They say that the cases of drug abuse and fake drugs could be reduced with proper induction of pharmacists. All the public hospitals of the city have not more than 10 pharmacists per hospital working for numerous beds, explicitly violating the NDP.
Dr Sadaqat Ali Khan, a senior surgeon and a professor at SIMS, while highlighting the significance of pharmacists, said, “Other than crosschecking, a pharmacist assures that the medicines are stored in suitable atmosphere and sometimes they also are handy in producing hospital-made drugs, such as cough mixtures. Pharmacists should be inducted in all public hospitals, which would save public money in the longer run.”
With hospital administrations disregarding the NDP, the professional career of fresh pharmacy graduates is at stake as well and they are becoming jobless. Pharmacy graduates usually work at pharmacies and pharmaceutical firms. Private pharmacies offer a fresh graduate Rs 10,000 to Rs 13,000. The D-pharmacy course is of 6 years of intensive study and abroad they are given the same stature as doctors.
Maryam Shabbir, a Lahore University student and a pharmacy graduate, thinks that her professional career is in jeopardy. “There is a great difference between the demand and the supply. Pharmacists are roaming around jobless while the patients continue to die only because of slight mismanagement from the government’s side. In hospitals abroad, doctors are not allowed to prescribe medicines; it is the job of the pharmacists,” she said. Jinnah Hospital Chief Executive Javed Akram likes to call pharmacist as the backbone of hospitals. He said that in medical practices around the world pharmacist stand side by side in all crucial moments.
He claimed that Jinnah Hospital was the only hospital which was abiding by the NDP.