Chinedum Babalola

Pharm D means Doctor of Pharmacy. Pharm D programme globally is a curriculum that was developed to make the pharmacy profession more patient-oriented. All along, the pharmacy curriculum in Nigeria was more products-oriented. But there is more to the role of pharmacists than handing over medicines to patients.

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.

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.

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.

The second study was on hypersensitivity of sulpha drugs in healthy people and people living with HIV. About 15 per cent from our survey reported various types of reaction to sulpha drugs. However, a breakdown of the data showed that hypersensitivity of sulpha drugs in people living with HIV was far higher.

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.

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.

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.

When individuals take a drug, the body’s ability to break this down fast is dependent on the availability of the enzyme that does this in the body. In some people, it is fast while in others it is either mild or moderate.

Also, the rate at which the body is able to breakdown a drug could be genetic modified. So, it is possible based on a person’s genetic makeup to predict those that may react to some drugs. This makes some people’s reaction to particular drugs genetically.

There was also a need for staff development, and for this reason seminars were organised to equip the staff with the appropriate knowledge needed to carry out their duties as expected.

Quinine is one of the oldest drugs in the pharmacopeia and during the time, chloroquine was failing, quinine came useful for the treatment of severe malaria until the ACT came on board. Being a drug that can be used to treat cerebral malaria, a life threatening form of malaria, only the quinine suppository would be useful in the rural areas where chances of giving it by intravenous injection may not be possible.

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.

Practice of combining antibiotic with anti-malarials is very common in Nigeria, are there possibilities of such a practice affecting the effectiveness of these drugs? From studies carried out many common antimalarials reduce the effectiveness of common antibiotics, thus promoting resistance in disease-causing germs to these antibiotics.

In most of the studies, there were between 50 and 80 per cent reduction in the effectiveness of these antibiotics. This is something people, especially healthcare providers should be mindful of.