The original article can be found in: Trinidad Express By Camille Bethel
A new pharmacy board is needed in order to assist in curbing the importation of counterfeit drugs into this country, Dr Neil Singh has said.
Speaking with the Express during the British-Caribbean Chamber of Commerce’s “Forum on the Deadly Implications of Counterfeit Drug
Trafficking” at the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Westmoorings, yesterday, Singh, secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Medical Council (TTMC), said this change was critical because the people involved in the retail sale of the pharmaceuticals are the ones breaking the law.
“The pharmacy board needs to be a little more accountable to the people.
The pharmacy board is run by pharmacists who own their own pharmacies. They are running a boys’ club and protecting their own.
“We need to get greater stakeholder participation so we can look ally engaging in that behaviour (selling counterfeit drugs); they can be disciplined and licence removed,” he said.Singh said there needs to be the introduction of non-pharmacists on the pharmacy board just as was done on the medical board.
He explained there were two types of pharmacists in the country: the old pharmacists that run big business with diplomas and the younger pharmacists with the five-year degrees.
The older ones, he said were dispensing drugs that are supposed to be prescribed while the younger pharmacists were working for them.
“They are the ones also protecting them from their positions on the board. So they are allowing the old ones to test pressure and sugar at their pharmacies; they are allowing them to bring down products without registering them; they are allowing them to buy drugs from suitcase and container traders,” he said.
Singh said the pharmacy board has never taken action against errant pharmacists, and he has experienced this first hand.
“I have officially complained to the pharmacy board about pharmacists on five occasions and I received nothing—as the secretary of the medical council and as a patient.
“I have complained but the practice is allowed to continue because it is a boys’ club. We have to change the composition of the pharmacy board and make them more accountable to the people.”
He said because of this country’s very loose regulations that this was happening, but in Jamaica and Barbados, it could not happen because they take their regulations seriously.
,p>President of the pharmacy board Andrew Rahaman has not yet commented on the issue.
