THE Public Health Ministry and PAHO-WHO are teaming up this week to spearhead a national conversation to help upgrade the laws, acts, regulations and policies guiding the local pharmaceutical sector.

The purpose of the two-day meeting is to address the widespread abuse of antibiotic medicines, the existence of illegal pharmacists, and other irregularities instigated by many patients.
Mr. Oneil Atkins, Director of Pharmacies at the Public Health Ministry, said Friday that the two-day consultation is to beef up the existing “weak” medicines and pharmaceutical policies which are preyed upon by patients, professionals and charlatans operating in the sector.

Atkins said, too, that the forum is intended to help patients, especially to identify which are registered pharmacies in the country.
The two-day forum is also intended to help sharpen the awareness of local patients, whom he said are “too uninformed” about critical pharmaceutical issues and policy matters in the sector.

Atkins, who also functions as Adviser to Public Health Minister, Volda Lawrence, is concerned that local patients always “demand medication every time they see a physician” when sometimes all they need is a conversation with a specialist.
“We need to educate the public,” Atkins said, adding: “The business of medicines is handled very loosely in Guyana by the professionals and the public.”

He said that one of the outcomes of the two-day consultation is to “hold professionals accountable and responsible” for activities in the sector.
It is anticipated that although the archaic policies, laws, acts and regulations will be updated and be substantially more rigid, they will retain the element of “flexibility to ensure safety [and also] to ensure they provide maximum benefit from the medication for patients.”

He is especially concerned about the abuse of antibiotic medicines among practitioners and patients, and said the upgraded documents will force the former “to be more responsible and accountable,” and help keep counterfeit drugs off the local market.
According to Atkins, the “widespread abuse” is especially acute in Regions Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam); Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); Four (Demerara-Mahaica); and Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).

Consequently, he is hoping that legislators will act “as fast as possible” to get the new laws and regulations enacted to help the Public Health Ministry deal with the “grave problem with antibiotics resistance in Guyana.”

Improvements are also in urgent need to help the government weed out many who are dispensing medicines, but “never saw a pharmacy school”.
The long-overdue overhauling of the pharmaceutical sector is to help “administer the quality of primary healthcare and health services to the citizens of our beloved country,” Minister Lawrence pointed out when the issue became public last year.

She prescribed then that when improved, “…policy decisions must be evidence-based and tailored to meet the specific needs of our population and health services.”
The Guyana Government remains strongly committed to ensuring healthy lives and the wellbeing for all, and promises to continue to look and assess the existing management systems, and strengthen them and make necessary changes to guarantee that the systems “can become efficient and effective and accessibility and adequacy of the supply of safe, essential, quality and scientifically sound drugs and medical products can be realised in all health facilities in all regions,” Lawrence assured last year.

PAHO-WHO’s Dr. William Adu-Krow; Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, Guyana’s Chief Medical Officer; Atkins and Ms. Kesaundra Alves, Chairperson of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) Board are expected to address tomorrow’s opening ceremony.