BY LOH FOON FONG
PETALING JAYA: The Medical Practitioners Coalition Association of Malaysia wants the current system where private general practitioners can dispense medicine to be maintained for patients' convenience.
Its president Dr Jim Loi said that patients’ views should be heard on this.
For example, he said: “What am I to do if a feverish elderly woman comes to my clinic and I have to tell her that I can’t give medicine after examining her because of this dispensing separation and she has to go to the nearest pharmacy, which is one or two kilometers away?"
The Star reported yesterday that pharmacists had hoped that the dispensing separationwould come into effect on April 1 when patients could no longer get their medicine from private clinics but obtain it from pharmacies, if the Health Ministry accepts the proposed “doctors diagnose, pharmacists dispense system”.
While the system may cause some inconvenience to patients, pharmacists said it would help lower the prices of medicine and give doctors access to many more drugs to prescribe.
However, Dr Loi said the system might add to the patient’s cost and time.
Malaysia, he said, should not be compared to the dispensing separation system adopted in Britain or the United States.
“We have no current economic status that allows insurance to cover medical bills, such as the National Health Insurance scheme in Britain, to support that,” he said.
Asked about the benefit of the new system that aims to restrict abuse of drugs by consumers, Dr Loi said that if it was enforced properly, it would be good for everyone.
However, there was no guarantee that pharmacists would not prescribe medicine without a doctor's prescription under the new system, which he said was rampant even with the current system due to the lack of enforcement.
He said major pharmacies had stopped selling medicine without a doctor's prescription in recent years only because they wanted to show good behaviour before the dispensing separation is implemented.
Dr Loi said that “it was important for doctors to be given the right to prescribe as well because they understand patients better”.
He said when a pharmacist did not have a doctor's prescribed drug in stock, he might suggest another drug to replace it and this could pose a problem if they change the prescription.
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