Lagos Pharmacists Lament High Cost of Local Healthcare Services - AllAfrica.com

Sola OgundipeLagos

THE high cost of healthcare and mediocre entree to indispensable medical specialties in the country's healthcare funding is a beginning of concern for the Lagos State subdivision of the Pharmaceutical Society of Federal Republic Of Nigeria (PSN).

A statement issued during the Society's 2008 Annual General Meeting, attributed the root cause of the unsavoury development to the pattern whereby docs prosecute in the pattern of dispensing of drugs in private clinics as against the ethical motive of the profession.

Chairman of the State PSN subdivision Pharm. Bolo Tie Oyawole who signed the statement, berated the built-in failing in the nation's public wellness attention bringing system which he alleged was putting the multitude at the clemency of operators of the public wellness attention system .

Lamenting the continued pattern of out-of-pocket payment procurance of drugs, Oyawole said: "In a state where 70.2 per cent of the population unrecorded below the poorness line of less than one dollar a day, it goes glaring that issues concerning terms of drugs are germaine to improving entree to indispensable medicines."

According to him, a recent study confirmed that lone 38 per cent of house throws patronised public wellness installations when faced with illness, preferring to seek the services of medical specialty sellers, private wellness clinics and pharmacies.

Noting that these degree of attention suppliers were the chief sourcs of drugs in the private sector, which underscored the importance of the private sctor in medical specialty pricing, Oyawole said the phenomenon of dispensing docs is well established in the state as it is estimated that about 90 per cent of private clinics distribute drugs in their facilities.

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"Even when the relevant Acts of parliament and the 2005 national drug policy do dispensing of drugs the sole go on of pharmacists, Nigerian docs shamefully continue to go against this planetary norm for pecuniary gains."

In his brief, Oyawole recalled that the World Health Arrangement recently showed that patients in Federal Republic Of Nigeria wage 2-6 modern times international mention terms for medical specialties in public and private wellness facilites in the country.

He noted that from the study, drug terms in the public sector were almost indistinguishable with private pharmaceutics and that private infirmaries and clinics were shown to bear down up to 184 per cent more than public wellness installations and 193 per cent more than private retail pharmaceutics for indispensable drugs.