Public interest should be focus of Pharmacy Bill

WHILE the current Parliament session is nearing its full term, there is one bill that has seemingly gone “missing” from the radar.

And that is the proposed Pharmacy Bill by the Health Ministry that had been a point of debate for nearly a decade now.

The Health Ministry, in the past five years, has said that the bill would be brought to the Dewan Rakyat but it has yet to see the light of day.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam said last September that discussions with various stakeholders had taken place and the ministry was awaiting approval from the Attorney-General’s Chambers before the bill could be tabled.

The Government must not go silent over the tabling of the bill.

Part of the transformation plan for the health industry in Malaysia includes looking into the dispensing rights for controlled medicines.

Pharmacists and doctors have been at loggerheads for years as to who is more qualified to be given the dispensing rights.

The Pharmacy Bill was supposed to address this prolonged “battle” between the two professions and at the same time fortify other aspects of the supply chain of medicines in Malaysia.

The impact of any new legislation will also be felt by the consumers/patients.

Arguments and counter-arguments have been ongoing with no solution as there have been little or no proper large-scale studies done to cover the entire country to ascertain the qualitative and quantitative benefits or downfalls of the current system.

While both doctors and pharmacists have had their say on numerous platforms, it is also important that the public at large is consulted before any new laws are put in place.

It is open knowledge that doctors prefer patients to obtain medication from their in-house pharmacies after consultation and rarely volunteer to provide a written prescription for them to buy from a pharmacy.

Or are there doubts that pharmacists in Malaysia are still not on par with their counterparts in Australia, New Zealand, US, Britain or even Cambodia or Vietnam in dispensing prescriptions responsibly?

The often made accusations against pharmacists are lack of community pharmacies within reasonable distance from clinics, irresponsible pharmacists that sell medication without a doctor’s prescription, blatant abuse of antibiotics in pharmacies, inadequate patient record-keeping and no access or knowledge of patients’ health history.

It is hoped that the real beneficiary of the proposed Pharmacy Bill will be the people and not lopsided in any way just to pacify the professional bodies per se.