Demanding immediate intervention of the state government to fill up the vacancies of pharmacists in government hospitals and primary health centres, the Tamil Nadu Government Pharmacists Association (TNGPA) will organize a state wide strike and a protest rally in Chennai on the 24th of next month.

The strike is followed by the district agitations conducted in all the district head quarters on the 25th of this month. Pharmacists working in the government hospitals, CHCs, PHCs and ESI hospitals will take part in the strike of April 24th, said M. Devendran, general secretary of TNGPA.

The association has been demanding the government to appoint adequate number of pharmacists and several memoranda in this regard were submitted to the government many times. According to Devendran, there are more than 4,000 vacancies of pharmacists in the government hospitals and primary health centres.

He said as per MCI medical code there should be one pharmacist for one hundred patients in all the hospitals. Government should immediately appoint a minimum of 1,000 pharmacists for dispensing medicines in the government healthcare institutions in Tamil Nadu. According to Medical Council of India’s code of ethics, the physicians must consult the pharmacists to avoid prescription of irrational drugs or those drugs that cause contradictions.

Further, TNGPA wants the government to consider the problems under the hospitals of the veterinary department. Medicines are kept and dispensed in all the veterinary hospitals without qualified pharmacists. This is against the norms of drugs and cosmetics act. Devendran said there are more than 3,000 posts of pharmacists in veterinary hospitals.

For educating the patients about the use of drugs, drugs interaction and bio-availability of medicines, government should take steps to appoint clinical pharmacists in all the taluk and district hospitals. The state has a lot of Pharm D graduates who are the eligible persons to give awareness to the patients about drugs, he added.