The pharmacists in Tamil Nadu are concerned over the bleak employment opportunities in the country mainly due to the lack of employment opportunity in the government sector, the unhealthy trend of doctors opening pharmacy in their clinics and lack of strict enforcement for the regulation of appointing qualified pharmacists in the drug stores in the private sector.

Expressing concern, some working pharmacists, who participated in the refresher course held in Sankaralingam Bhuvaneswari College of Pharmacy in Sivakashi, said that the pharmacy graduates are facing a bleak employment opportunities in the society. The lack of employment opportunity in the government sector, the unhealthy trend of doctors opening pharmacy in their clinics and lack of strict enforcement for the regulation of appointing qualified pharmacists in the drug stores in the private sector are the bane of the pharmacy profession in the present day world, they remarked.

The College has conducted a Refresher Course for the working Pharmacists in the southern districts of the state. Pharmacists numbering 375 from the districts of Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Theni, Madurai and Ramnadapuram attended the course. Every year the college is conducting such courses to the working pharmacists, said Dr Sankar Thirupathy, principal of the College.

Eminent professors of leading pharmacy colleges in the state conducted lectures on topics such as 'Evaluation of New Drugs', 'Drug Interactions', Clinical Pharmacy and Patient Care and Latest Trends in Regulatory affairs.

Dr V Ravichandiran, principal, Vel's College of Pharmacy, Chennai and the vice-president of the state Pharmacy Council, spoke on the topic 'Evaluation of New Drugs' which included new drug development, herbal standardization, herbal potential of India, sources of new drugs and hyphenated techniques in evaluation of new drugs.

Dr S Palanisamy, director and Professor of P G Programme at Sankaralingam Bhuvaneswari College of Pharmacy gave a lecture on the topic 'Drug Interactions'. The speaker dwelt on the points such as interaction between drug and herbs, Drug-Drug Interaction, Capsicum-Phenytoin interaction, Ghee- anticholesterol drugs interaction and antibiotic drugs interaction with diuretics and anti-hypertensives.

Prof P Solairaj of the same college delved deep on the topic 'Clinical Pharmacy and Patient Care'. He described the role of Clinical Pharmacy in Patient Care, advantages of clinical Pharmacy in patient care, pharmaco-genomics in patient care, Pharmaco-kinetics in patient care, counselling in patient care and eliminating adverse drug reactions by adopting clinical Pharmacy.

The fourth speaker, P Ponrajan, managing partner, Pharmafabrikon, Madurai spoke in detail about the subject, 'Latest Trends in Regulatory affairs'.

The working pharmacists who attended the refresher course were given the participation certificates from the Tamil Nadu Pharmacy Council.