Mr. Stephen Ohene Sabi, Head of Pharmacy at the Pleasant Medical Centre in Ashaiman, Middle East, has urged Ghana’s Pharmacy Council to strictly enforce regulations governing the selling of medications.
Mr. Sabi said while the over-the-counter medicine merchants were supposed to sell Class C medications, some of them were selling prescription drugs.
He emphasised that the distribution of such medicines to patients as over-the-counter drugs could have negative implications, adding, for example, that it was now so simple to obtain antibiotics as over-the-counter medicines, which was not supposed to be the case.
Mr Sabi said this at the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility! A Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Office initiative aimed at promoting health-related communication and providing a platform for health information dissemination to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy
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Mr Sabi explained that the current situation had made it too easy for people to engage in self-medication rather than seeking medical attention at a hospital and being diagnosed before using such prescription medications.
He also revealed that several pharmacies were operating without qualified pharmacists at post, which should not be so.
“Community chemists are ideally the first point of contact, but most of them do not have qualified people manning the pharmacies; medicine counter assistants are more likely to be encountered when visiting pharmacies,” he noted.
Mr Sabi thus encouraged the public to always request to see the chemist when visiting a pharmacy to obtain pharmaceuticals, as this would ensure that they were diagnosed and given the appropriate medication.
He also warned the public against abusing sleeping pills, stressing that one of the key problems concerning sleeping medications was their frequent use, because all sleeping drugs were central nervous system depressants that slow down brain activity to assist a person to sleep.
“The body adjusts with continued use, causing a physical dependence on the medication; therefore, a reduction in dosage and skipping a day or two before taking the pills will eventually reverse the body to its default,” he suggested.
Mr. Sabi added that before one could administer a responsible dose of medication, one had to read more about the medicine and know the side effects or reactions associated with it on the body after consumption.
He advised that when a physician prescribed a medication, one needed to take it as prescribed without overdosing because some medicines, when overdosed, make people addicted; therefore, people should stick to prescribed dosage only.
Mr Sabi advised that if one had any health conditions such as kidney or liver problems, among others, they could not take any medications that was not prescribed by a physician, advising that people should therefore avoid irresponsible self-medication.
