E-DRUG: When is quality and safety assured? (3)
------------------------------------------------
Dear colleagues,
I guess the operative words on this subject is Quality and Safety.
This subject also touches on the current debate on using expired drugs
once the undergo validation. We are assuming that patients in any part
of the world, will be very knowledgeable about the need to store drugs
properly in order to preserve the status of the drug. Anyone who has
done a home- delivery of drugs to house- bound patients may agree with
me that not all patients are that conscientious in how they store
their prescription drugs, irrespective of whether these patients can
read or not. Also, some of us who have had the sometimes shocking
experience of receiving drugs for destruction from patient's home,
will attest to the very poor state such drugs arrive in.
So, based on that experience, I would hesitate to promote the transfer
of past prescription drugs from home to hospital use, unless one can
fully satisfy oneself that the patient did indeed use and keep the
medicine in accordance with recommended storage. I would therefore
also not promote such practice in other countries or certainly to
public health programmes in developing countries where at best the
quality assurance environment is itself very poor. Years ago I had the
sad experience (as a regional pharmacist) of participating in the
visiual screening (that is all we could do at that time) of literally
a van load of donated drugs from some Western donor group that arrived
at a mission hospital. Indeed, some products appeared to have come
from some one's home (very well meaning, of course). The outcome of
that exercise was that we could not bring ourselves to adding that
consignment to stock, and had to have the lot destroyed (at cost to
MoH). It was only the right thing to do, and both MoH and hospital
management agreed to that action. We were assured by hospital
management that they'd apply the guidelines on donations in future.
I go back to what Atieno contributed last week in respect to the use
of expired drugs: If we can invest in proper procurement and
distribution planning, we would not have the need to use either
suspect drugs that are still in date but come from some ones' home, or
indeed, time- expired drugs.
Regards,
Bonnie
Bonface Fundafunda PhD, MBA, B.Pharm(Hon)
21 Beverstone Road,
Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 7LL
England
bcfunda@hotmail.com