CEO/ Dir @Heyday pharmacy⛑🥼// Fitness enthusiast 🏋️♀️
Owerri, Nigeria
Joined September 2013
- Tweets28.4K
- Following3K
- Followers6.4K
- Likes21.2K
PharmHeydayy retweeted
True
M&B still manufactures branded Flagyl in Ogun state. Check the pack, it is even written there. Same plant that makes the Flagyl also makes M&B’s Emgyl.
Economic intervention is part of pharmacy practice. So, when we advocate for quality, potent generics, it’s not necessarily about us as pharmacists. Whatever brand is prescribed, the pharmacist will still dispense it and earn whatever profit accrues to that product.
The bigger issue is that there is a huge gap in practice, and more often than not, the patient is the one who suffers.
Are quality brands ideal for serious cases? Yes. Patient safety must always come first. Can most patients afford them? No. Are there other brands in the market capable of achieving the same therapeutic outcomes? Yes.
These three truths can coexist.
We are discussing situations where a particular brand is available, but affordability is a challenge. What happens when that brand is unavailable, scarce, or the few units circulating are coming from questionable sources? What happens when it cannot be found anywhere?
Should a patient have to comb the length and breadth of a town searching for a particular brand when a quality alternative may be available? What if it is an emergency?
Most of the branded medicines we hold in high regard have, at one point or another, experienced shortages or disappeared from the market. Rocephin, Augmentin, Norvasc, and others have all faced periods of limited availability.
Did patients suddenly stop receiving treatment because these brands were unavailable? Did everyone who needed them simply abandon treatment until they resurfaced?
This conversation is long overdue. If they can’t see things from our lens, it’s okay.
PharmHeydayy retweeted
Ferrings Carbetocin vial is the same as the Ferrings Carbetocin ampoule which is subsidzed by FG and some NGOs. one is 20k plus and the other is 2k.
PharmHeydayy retweeted
𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲📜: 𝐂𝐎𝐐𝟏𝟎
Your body produces a substance that helps generate energy, protects cells against oxidative damage, and now exists as a supplement.
Meet Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10).
Here is the fascinating story behind it. 👇
PharmHeydayy retweeted
Taking vitamin C supplements is fun until your kidney complains. Taking high doses of vitamin C consistently can increase your risk of kidney stones and, in some circumstances, kidney damage.
PharmHeydayy retweeted
Well spoken 💯
Most pharmacists can see where he is coming from. And to be honest, his analysis is not entirely wrong.
If every brand of a medication circulating in our market were truly equivalent in quality and therapeutic performance, doctors would have less reason to insist on specific brands and could prescribe more confidently using generic names alone. Unfortunately, that is not always the reality. This is one reason you need a trusted pharmacist and a trusted pharmacy to handle your prescriptions.
However, the real issue here is not whether Rocephin is the best brand of ceftriaxone or the only brand a particular doctor trusts. The bigger issue is the lack of communication between the prescribing doctor and the dispensing pharmacist.
Several factors influence the choice of medication and brand, including:
The doctor’s knowledge of available brands and their expected quality.
The severity of the patient’s condition, which may influence the need for reliable and predictable therapeutic outcomes.
The patient’s affordability and ability to sustain the prescribed treatment.
The availability of the prescribed medication at the time of dispensing.
I have made a post and a video highlighting similar challenges within our healthcare system. Drug selection is not always as straightforward as people assume; the factors involved can be quite complex.
Sometimes, a doctor prescribes a brand with a stronger reputation for quality. Sometimes, a more affordable alternative may be appropriate. In other situations, the patient cannot afford the prescribed brand, the brand is unavailable, or there may be legitimate concerns about the quality of an alternative.
The solution is not for the pharmacist to blindly substitute or for the doctor to insist on a brand without considering the circumstances.
Where a substitution becomes necessary because of cost, availability or concerns about quality, the prescribing doctor should be informed, particularly where the change could affect treatment. The pharmacist should also be able to explain and defend their recommendation, and the doctor should be willing to consider it.
Ultimately, the doctor and pharmacist should work together in the patient’s best interest. Neither profession should operate in isolation when a patient’s treatment is at stake.
The goal is not to defend a particular brand or professional ego. The goal is to ensure that the patient receives safe, effective, appropriate and affordable treatment.
The issue is that areas where malaria is endemic don’t carry out as much research. If this were a huge issue in the west, we would have gotten sufficient data to back up for or not.
PharmHeydayy retweeted
The bias against healthcare professionals simply because their work directly involves saving lives is quite unfair.
People go to supermarkets and pay without owing. They go to clubs and spend millions, go on vacations, and do all sorts of things without expecting everything to be free. Some even book trips months in advance and pay for them.
But the moment someone enters a hospital, the doctor is expected to wave a magic wand and make the patient well because, apparently, he is Harry Potter!
Healthcare is expensive. In saner climes, governments step in to subsidize treatments and make healthcare more accessible to the people who need it.
But in Nigeria, every business owner is practically on their own. In fact, the government will do everything possible to make running a business more difficult, and then the same business owner is expected to shoulder the burden of patients who cannot afford to pay.
You walk into a hospital and ask why there is no electricity, oxygen, or MRI machine. Is the doctor supposed to purchase these things with Insha Allah?
The doctor’s services are paid for. They have families to feed, nurses to pay, equipment to purchase, and a hospital to maintain. Their desire is not to watch a patient die, but what exactly are they expected to do when there is no money to purchase the required supplies or even afford the services of registered nurses?
A doctor cannot manufacture oxygen with bare hands. A hospital cannot run on good intentions alone.
Yes, healthcare professionals have a duty to provide care, and they should be held accountable when they fall short of their professional responsibilities. But we must also acknowledge that healthcare delivery requires resources, infrastructure, equipment, and personnel. Compassion alone cannot replace these things.
The painful part is that many of you know where the real problem lies, but, as usual, rather than channel that anger towards the institutions responsible for creating and addressing these problems, you turn against one another.
And let’s not forget something else: a doctor can do everything within their power to resuscitate a patient, yet the patient may still die. The same relatives who could not afford to pay for a hospital card may turn around and insult the hospital, as though the healthcare team deliberately wanted the patient to die.
Human life is precious, but providing healthcare costs money. Both realities can exist at the same time.
We cannot demand world-class healthcare while refusing to discuss who should fund it, how hospitals should be equipped, how healthcare workers should be paid, and what governments must do to make quality healthcare accessible.
The solution is not to stop holding healthcare professionals accountable. It is to stop blaming them for systemic failures they cannot single-handedly fix.
But let’s keep pretending that the problem is always the doctor or the hospital. As usual, the institutions that should be held responsible get away with it.
