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Cameroon: Stopping the Sales, Dispensing of Medicines By Unqualified Persons
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The Post (Buea)
16 March 2008
Posted to the web 17 March 2008
Joseph Jamea
Tiko
As a concerned Cameroonian, I continue to worry about the indiscriminate sales and dispensing of medication in the country by unqualified and unlicensed persons.
This phenomenon has reached alarming proportions as seen in the proliferation of illegal medicine stores and roadside medicine vendors who openly operate in total disregard of laws regulating the safe and effective distribution of medicine in Cameroon.
The activities of these unqualified people also go against the prescriptions of the World Health Organisation, W.H.O, which describes the sales and dispensing of medication as a professional practice requiring utmost professional judgment since it affects public health and safety.
From my layman's understanding, medications, by their inherent nature, are potential poisons in the sense that they interfere with body functions to produce effects which do not only cure diseases but can destroy the society if their application and distribution is not regulated and controlled in the public interest.
It is for these reasons that standards have been set for persons responsible for handling medications. These persons should possess the requisite scientific and professional qualification backed with practical experience. Going by national and international legislation, only doctors, pharmacists and qualified nurses meet the requirements to ensure drug safety.
Unfortunately, in Cameroon, this is the contrary. Medicinal products are being hawked and sold in illegal medicine stores and in open market places by untrained and unlicensed persons who know little or nothing about disease processes, the mechanism of drug actions, their safety and risk.
This situation continues to pose a great danger to public health. The October 1996 incident where five children died in the South Province of Cameroon after consumption of fake worm medicine bought from a drug hawker by their father is still vivid in our minds. Many other drug accidents go unrecorded.
It is the responsibility of every country in the world to ensure that, in the interest of public health and safety, its citizens are not exposed to the dubious and hazardous services of medical quacks.
Over a period, pharmacists like Mr. Eric Nvenge tried - to no avail - to draw the attention of the public to the dangers posed by these unprofessional practices but ended up receiving threats to his life by perpetrators of the criminal and illegal medicine trade and practice.
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There is, therefore, the need for all levels of government and professional health organisations to embark on a more vigorous campaign to stop this illegal and unprofessional trade in medications. If nothing is urgently done to check this abuse and misuse, our authorities shall be held responsible before history.
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