With greater emphasis on self compliance towards ensuring patient safety, Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will roll out training programmes for all the 80, 000 drug licensees in the state in the coming months to help them adopt good pharmaceutical practices (GPP).

In 1992 the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) developed standards for pharmacy services under the heading “Good pharmacy practice in community and hospital pharmacy settings”

Pharmacist being a vital link between the patient and allied healthcare professionals, 25th September is also celebrated as World Pharmacists Day (WPD) globally every year designated by the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Council.

In order to empower pharmacist right from manufacturing to final delivery of the product to the patient and thus improving access to medicines, Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council (MSPC) has also released a book on Adverse Drug Reaction Induced by Drugs (specific ADR).

A drug-induced disease is the unintended effect of a drug that results in mortality or morbidity with symptoms sufficient to prompt a patient to seek medical attention and/or to require hospitalisation. Despite best efforts to ensure the safety and effectiveness of all drugs, millions of patients each year develop drug-induced diseases that increase the overall healthcare cost.

The book gives a list of drugs that can lead to a new onset of diseases or exacerbate an existing condition like myasthenia gravis, aplastic anaemia, hypertension, hypotension, hyperglycaemia, hypoglycaemia, hyper/hypoglycaemia, ototoxicity and tinnitus. This can help all the healthcare professionals to identify a drug interaction and prevent an ADR.

The terminology of community pharmacy has been defined with the recent addition of the Pharmacy Practice Regulation 2015. The regulations are enacted not to provide professional protection to the community pharmacists but to protect the public health likely to be endangered by the mishandling of medicines.

With time, the role of community pharmacists have undergone a sea change. They are not mere medicines sellers. The World Health Organization outlines the activities of community pharmacists as: processing of prescriptions, caring of patients, monitoring of drug utilization, extemporaneous preparations, responding to symptoms of minor ailments, provide medicine related information to patients and healthcare professional, and participating in health promotion. Among these, the processing of prescription is perhaps the most important and difficult task.

Following the recommendations of the WHO Expert Committee and the endorsement of the FIP Council in 1997, the FIP/WHO joint document on good pharmacy practice was published in 1999 in the thirty-fifth report of the WHO Expert Committee on Specifi cations for Pharmaceutical Preparations (WHO Technical Report Series, No. 885).

In collaboration with WHO, the first edition of a practical handbook Developing pharmacy practice — a focus on patient care was launched in 2006. This handbook is designed to meet the changing needs of pharmacists, setting out a new paradigm for pharmacy practice and presenting a step-by-step approach to pharmaceutical care.