Chinedum Babalola

While in school, I was privileged to be among the best students and even got a Federal Government scholarship.

There are a lot of opportunities for women; the world is focusing on women. So, by now, I do not expect any woman or young girl to complain of not being given an opportunity because there are a lot of opportunities out there for all young girls and women in the world as we speak; all we need to do is to find opportunities and grab them.

This is called adverse drug reaction and it could occur with the intake of many drugs because no drug is 100 per cent safe. A particular one is the hypersensitivity to sulpha-containing drugs. It also occurs with drugs that contain amino compounds

Some drugs are expected to be taken after food, some are to be taken on an empty stomach. For drugs that should be taken in an empty stomach, studies have shown that when taken with food, there is an interaction which may reduce their effectiveness. Rather such drugs can be taken about 30 minutes before food.

They should be able to clack the patient like a doctor to know medicines taken, how they are feeling, any need to change their medicine or dosage regime and so on. This is about individualised medicine. Nobody should die of drug reaction, if things work as they should. Handling over medicines, a pharmacy technician can do that. But information the patient needs about the drug should be provided by the pharmacist.

However, where the body’s ability to breakdown sulpha-containing drugs to safe compounds is slow, it ends up being changed into products that are not safe. This causes the adverse drug reaction that people experience.

One thing that is important to note is that drugs are poisons; there is no drug that really does not have its side effect. That is why the drug regulatory body based on pharmacovigilant sometimes recall some drugs from the market if high levels of adverse drug reactions are reported.

Given that the drug–drug interaction occurs at the absorption level, such problem is ruled out when it is given in the injection form. Also, the time of their administration can be separated by between two to three hours to ensure the full benefits of the two drugs are assessed.

Pharmacy is one of the best professions in the world and was rated by Forbes in January 2015 as the best health care profession in the USA.

The first study was on proguanil, a prophylactic antimalarial in healthy and sickle cell individuals. The study found that in persons with sickle cell, about one per cent of them breakdown the drug slowly while it was five per cent in healthy persons. This shows that there is genetic difference between the two groups of people.

Almost any drug can cause an adverse reaction. Reactions range from irritating or mild side effects such as nausea and vomiting to life-threatening anaphylaxis. Common symptoms of a drug reaction include hives, itching of the skin or eyes, skin rash, swelling of the lips, tongue, or face and wheezing.

So, Pharm D will be a more encompassing programme that will make a pharmacist able to handle all of these and pharmacists of this generation. Of course many people will be helped and many ill-healths arising from drug will be averted.

Most allergic reactions occur within hours to two weeks after taking the medication and most people react to medications to which they have been exposed to in the past. This process is called “sensitisation.” However, rashes may develop up to six weeks after starting certain types of medications. Rarely, blisters and bleeding inside the skin or the inner surfaces of the intestines may occur. Unfortunately, if it is the life threatening anaphylaxis, it could be fatal. So, it is important to educate people about these possible reactions to drugs.

All I can say is that I worked hard and as I was working hard, the titles kept coming. I became the first female pharmacy professor in UI when I was the director of General Studies and that was a whole lot of responsibilities because I was in charge of all the students, both regular and distant learning.

Work on quinine suppository has been on for so many years. Preliminary studies on the quinine suppository in rabbits indicated that it had antimalarial properties. However, the bioavailability is low. At the moment, one of our investigators is currently working in the USA on increasing its bioavailability to get an optimum product that will release the necessary level that they need. This will then be followed by more clinical trials.