The Pharmaceutical Society of SA has expressed concern about the national Health Department’s decision to use the SA Post Office (Sapo) to distribute chronic medication for government clinic patients.
TimesLIVE reports that Sapo announced the initiative earlier this month. The collection service is available at 342 post offices in all provinces except the Western Cape
However, Pharmaceutical Society president Joggie Hattingh said Sapo was not the correct facility to distribute medicine, and that the government should have rather considered other pharmacies for this purpose.
“Our concern is Sapo may not be able to maintain the value chain we are responsible for as pharmacists,” he said.
Hattingh questioned Sapo’s claims of having trained staff to handle the distribution of medicine, saying the only trained staff that may handle medication would be those registered with the SA Pharmacy Council.
However, the department said Sapo would only be distributing, not dispensing the medicine, with spokesperson Foster Mohale adding that the idea was to reduce the time patients spend travelling to clinics and waiting in queues for medicine.
When Hattingh said the council was concerned about the packaging, labelling and issuing of medicines, Mohale replied: “There is no need to worry. We wrote out this programme in 2014 and now we have managed to enrol more than 5m patients who are receiving their medication at more than 2,000 pickup points.”
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