Pharmacists want to shed off dormant tag
The well over 200 pharmacists in Malawi are eager to prove to the society that they are qualified medical personnel whose core technical competencies go well beyond what many people limit them to –merely dispensing drugs from odd hospital pharmacy windows.
Pharmaceutical Society of Malawi (PHASOM) president Enoch Foster said members of his organization, which was formed in 1990, are on an aggressive civic education thrust, in order to assert themselves as assets to Malawians and to shed off the dormant tag some people have given them.
He was speaking to The Nation yesterday when he and several other executive members of PHASOM fanned out to media houses to launch the campaign, which coincided with the World Pharmacy Day, which falls on September 25. The day’s theme is the Pharmacist (or Pharmacy Personnel), Your Partner In Health.
Stated Foster: “It’s high time people knew, and fully utilised, the cadre of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians and assistants, who are poised to serving Malawians in major life-saving roles.
“Their roles include advising on rational drug use, the importance of medicine compliance, dangers of self-medication and polypharmacy, the ills of drugs and substance abuse, medicine side-effects and their management, the medicine storage protocol, d diabetes and high blood pressure management and medicine procurement procedures and drug management.”
