[e-drug] When is quality and safety assured?

["chipupu kandeke" <kandeke@zamnet.zm>]

E-DRUG: When is quality and safety assured?
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Dear e-druggers,

Geoff Crumpin and Joy Wingfield in The Pharmaceutical Journal (UK) article
(Broad Spectrum) of 18 September 2004 discusses the above subject in
relation to recently introduced policies in NHS for use of patients' own
medicines in hospitals. They suggest that NHS patients reissued with their
own medicines are offered a lower standard of protection than that required
for patients in the world's poorest communities. They question how the
reissuing policy can protect the wellbeing of the patients when storage
conditions to which medicines have been exposed are not known, hence
presumed possibility that the quality and safety of been compromised. On the
other hand reissue of medicines is an attractive measure as the article
reports that in the UK medicines to a value of in excess of #500m are
destroyed annually.

Is reissue of medicines a solution to reducing drug wastage? Should
controlled reissuing of domiciliary medicines be permitted for charitable
purposes ( for poor communities of the world?

Chipupu Kandeke B.Pharm, MSc, DMS
Pharmaceutical Services Manager
Churches Health Association of Zambia
Zambia
kandeke@zamnet.zm