The role of pharmacists in a variety of health care settings covering clinical studies, patient counselling and hospital services is much evident in the current context of healthcare delivery. Therefore there is need for a mandatory presence of pharmacist across the healthcare spectrum, said former President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

Pharmacists are now seen a requisite professional to ensure tackling of drug related problems and to make sure the right medicines are administered in the  right dosage forms. This mandates a compulsory presence of a pharmacist at medical centres and hospitals across the nook and corner of the country. At the primary healthcare centres which have a paucity of medical and nursing staff, a pharmacist could chip in his expertise to monitor the patients in consultation with the doctors, counsel them and administer the required drugs, said Dr Kalam who was in Bengaluru as the chief guest for the valedictory function of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Government College of Pharmacy.

Citing the role of a pharmacist, Dr Kalam highlighted his critical importance in healthcare space. The concerned authorities are now advised to enhance training programmes for pharmacists to ensure better health care services. He lauded the efforts of the drugs control department in curbing spurious drugs.

He called upon student community to actively pursue research and consider it as an integral part of academic process. Highlighting the advantages of collaborative research, he brought to the notice the success of open source drug discovery (OSDD) which is an initiative of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) in mitigating the suffering of the poor. The emphasis of the project is to undertake research in frontier areas like malaria, tuberculosis etc. which are seen to afflict the third world countries and pharma majors need to extend more focus to conduct research on advanced drugs for these diseases.

“Specifically OSDD has now focused on tuberculosis and is looking to discover better and more effective drugs where a larger number of scientists could be associated with the research,” he said.

Dr Kalam also advised the industry to incorporate six sigma concept to ensure zero defects in manufacturing processes and ensure quality products in the market. Further he recommended the industry to partner with academia and ensure success of the Indian pharma industry. Finally he made students and pharmacists to take an oath and ensure the best of services for the profession.

The two-day Golden Jubilee celebration of the Government of College of Pharmacy which kicked off on June 1 concluded on June 2, 2013, had a string of informative sessions covering from challenges of a professional pharmacist to highlighting the stringent norms to ensure imparting of quality pharmacy education. The panel of speakers included Dr B Suresh, president, Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) and the vice chancellor, JSS University, DA Gundu Rao, president, Karnataka State Pharmacy Council and Dr Veerapan Subrahmanyam from the US.