Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA) is coming up with a major initiative to rope in pharmacists to ensure that the patients are cured completely by educating and motivating them to continue the treatment till the disease is cured totally.

The project, which comes under Union Health Ministry’s DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course) programme, is to ensure the support of pharmacists to act as the link between patient and the doctor. Under the project, IPA is planning to train pharmacists for increasing awareness among patients on diseases like TB, asthma, diabetes, hypertension etc.

"The increasing number of deaths by mere lack of awareness underlines the importance of a vital role played by the pharmacists," Manjiri Gharat, Project Chairperson, IPA TB Fact Card Project, told Pharmabiz.

"So IPA decided to rope in local pharmacist to monitor patient treatments, to educate and motivate them to continue the treatment till the disease is cured completely," Gharat added.

To observe the treatment and ensure adherence to treatment, government started DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short course). Unfortunately, 50 to 60% patients do not opt for DOTS and remain out of purview of direct treatment observation. These people go to private practitioners and purchase medicines from chemists. The default rate is quite high in this sector. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop mechanisms for the supervision of their treatment, said IPA .

The TB card was launched by Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA), in a collaborative effort with Commonwealth Pharmaceutical Association (CPA) and International Pharmaceutical Student's Federation (IPSF).

As part of this project, the pharmacists take down the details of the patients who approach them for medicines and gives a fact sheet and medication record card where the patients keeps track of the medicines taken each day.

“Many patients are not aware of the seriousness of completing their course of medicines. Literacy is not a problem. Even well educated people are not caring. Diseases like diabetes, asthma and hypertension are on the rise now-a-days due to the changing lifestyle. Lack of awareness regarding diseases and reluctance to complete the course of medicines worsens the situation. Medicine literacy is of utmost important,” Gharat opines.

“The pharmacists realise that they have an equal role to play along with doctors in treating a patient. In many countries, pharmacists are part of the healthcare team. Systematic training is needed for them. To make them more aware of the disease, they will be trained by providing advices from senior pharmacists, doctors and discussing experiences,” she added.

Talking to Pharmabiz, Subodh Priolkar, president, IPA said, “In the US and Europe, pharmacists can even challenge the prescription of a doctor if any mistakes are detected. Here in India, the role of the pharmacists has to be improved more. So we have to realise the importance of community pharmacists in our society.”

Explaining the initiative, he told that IPA was conducting programmes all over India to train the pharmacists for better awareness. We have 30-35 pharmacists in each training programme. So far around 500 pharmacists were benefited from the programme. Along with providing additional training to the trainer, we are regularly updating the training manual.”