KARACHI, Oct 24: The budget for medicines allocated every year by the government is sufficient to meet almost all the medication needs of an institution like the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. However, due to irrational prescription of drugs and mismanagement a lot of money is wasted.

This was stated by JPMC Director Prof Kazi Abdul Shakoor on Friday during the opening session of a two-day workshop on “Good Clinical Practices, Rational Use of Drugs and Adverse Drugs Reaction Reporting,” organized jointly by the Federal Ministry of Health and World Health Organization.

“We have traditionally been given Rs70 million every year but soon we will be getting Rs81 million. This should be sufficient to meet almost all the requirements of this hospital but due to several reasons the patients and their attendants, who are often poor, have to buy medicine and catheters etc from their own pockets,” said Prof Abdul Shakoor.

He urged the senior consultants and doctors to prescribe drugs that were affordable or were readily available in the hospital. “Drug prescribing habits need to be looked into.

He suggested that while prescribing medicines to patients, doctors should keep in view their incomes.

The Director said a huge quantity of some drugs get wasted because they were not sufficiently prescribed, adding this be corrected at once.

Prof A Shakoor, urging the doctors present to handle the patients’ cases sympathetically, said they must get to the roots of the ailments through talking to the patients in detail about their living conditions, in a kind manner.

“By just smiling at them you can lessen their pain. Please think about this,” he said, while trying to impress upon the physicians the importance of translating good thoughts into good habits.

“One good thought can lead to a good action and if the same is repeated several times one good habit can be formed. And that will mean a positive change in your behaviour.”

Prof Mashoor A Shah urged the doctors to closely watch the adverse effects of multi-drug prescriptions, stressing the need of proper diagnosis.

“If a patient comes up to a doctor and describes two sets of symptoms, the doctor should not be trigger happy and suggest two sets of medicine for the symptoms. May be the two symptoms are related and require only one set of drugs,” he warned.

The professor called upon the physicians to keep themselves abreast of the latest developments, not just in medicine but in pharmacology too. He also underlined the need for doctors to maintain their patients’ records properly.

Dr Farzana Chaudhary of the Federal Health Ministry, said Pakistani drugs were of good quality. “Pakistan has actually started exporting medicines in a big enough way.”

Today Pakistani medicines were being exported to more than 50 countries, including Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines and Kenya, she informed, while stressing the need to have graduate pharmacists at all the pharmacies.

These Pharmacy graduates would not only question any wrong prescription but would also maintain the quality of the drugs through good storage practices.

Dr Kaiser Waheed told Dawn that seminars or workshops on medicines were organized at least once every year in the major cities of the country. The idea was to educate and train the physicians and doctors in the public hospitals on good practices, he said.