Pharmacy: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

The pharmacy profession has changed.  The reason why a pharmacist choose pharmacy as a career, might not be the reason for still practising the profession today.  Or it may be the reason for not being in the profession anymore.  Especially in South Africa, pharmacists had to deal with a lot of change in the last couple of years.  The effect of this is evident in the decreasing number of students registering at the universities.   At first, pharmacists had to deal with doing community service for the first time and more recently, the new price legislation had an effect on all sectors of pharmacy.

Why are you a pharmacist?  What motivates you and what do you enjoy about pharmacy?  One of the reasons why I chose this career, was the different fields that pharmacists can enter after qualifying.  This is still true and you will find pharmacists in all kinds of professions outside the retail pharmacy.  But I still talk to a lot of friends who are not happy and who cannot seem to find the “ideal” job.  For some of them the reason for not being happy in their current position is the salary, for others the working conditions (long hours, colleagues ….).  But I believe that you will find all these factors in other professions as well. 

It would be interesting to hear the views of other pharmacists in various fields of pharmacy…

The involvement of the pharmacist in the fight against HIV/AIDS

Recently published statistics regarding the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, revealed that South Africa has the highest number of HIV-positive people in the world.  Mail & Guardian (23 July 2007, Sydney, Australia) reports the following:  ”according to the United Nations, close to 40-million people worldwide are infected with the Aids virus and treatment had dramatically expanded from 240 000 people in 2001 to 1,3-million by 2005.  South Africa has regained its number-one spot as the country with the greatest number of HIV-positive people, after the official estimate of India’s HIV-positive population was more than halved.   It is now estimated that 2,47-million people out of India’s more than 1,1-billion population have HIV, down from 5,7-million previously. An estimated 5,5-million South Africans carry the virus out of a total population of approximately 47-million”.

It is only logical that pharmacists are involved in the treatment of HIV patients at different levels.  The Mail & Guardian report stated that an absence of proper pharmaceutical storage had seen HIV/Aids drugs expire before they could be administered.  This is clearly an area which needs to be monitored closely, from manufacturing of the drug to distribution and eventually ordering stock for the hospital or pharmacy.   This is supported by guidelines published in a position paper by the South African Pharmacy Council.  The report stated that pharmacists must be utilised to ensure the supply of appropriate drugs for the prevention and treatment of opportunistic and HIV related diseases and by managing the procurement, distribution and use of these drugs. 

It was also mentioned that pharmacists play an important role in monitoring the cost of drugs, assisting with budgeting and forecasting demand of e.g.
· parenteral nutrition,
· antibiotics,
· anti-virals,
· anti-retrovirals,
· relevant vaccines,
· TB drugs, and
· antifungal drugs.

Evidently, pharmacists plays a key role in the management of HIV/AIDS.  Pharmacists are active in different pharmaceutical fields and may therefore be presented with opportunities to become involved in various ways.  The role of the pharmacist would therefore be determined by his/her area of speciality or the work he/she is currently doing, thereby contributing to the global effort in fighting this disease.   

The chronicles of weight loss

We all enjoy good food, good company and indulge a bit, in fact some of us indulge quite a lot. When the weekend has passed, it is back to work and our daily routine. We work hard and when we get home in the afternoon excercising isn’t actually on top of our list. Slowly but surely the kilojoules creep up on us and after a couple of months our trousers fit a lot tighter than it used to. Does this sound familiar?

You have decided to loose weight, maybe on recommendation from your doctor that being overweight is hazardous to your heart, blood pressure and general health, or maybe you would like to fit into that pair of jeans you paid quite a bit for… Diets and over the counter medication for weight loss claim to burn fat, build and tone muscle but this often only leads to frustration and is rarely effective over the long term. If a salesperson recommends a product that has the potential to change the shape of your body without excercise, the product is usually too good to be true. 

Although most of us would prefer that indeed such a magical product exists, excercise is still the only proven method of losing weight and maintaining your ideal weight. The secret of losing weight is for your body to burn more kilojoules than your daily intake, a principle I have seen to work very effectively in my own life.   

Welcome to the Pharmacy & Health blog

We are joining the blogniverse (blog + universe)!  The following quote best describes what we aim to achieve with this blog:

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”  Edward Lorenz

The blog is a natural extension of the website www.pharmaconnect.co.za , with the aim of connecting the pharmaceutical and health community and every individual interested in pharmaceuticals and health care.