Drug information issues: a Caribbean perspective

ABSTRACT

Effective use of medicaments depends on a chain of specific events selection of a limited drug list for a national formulary; maintenance of efficient drug supply and drug information systems; rational prescribing by physicians, pharmacists, or primary health workers; and intelligent compliance by patients. In poor developing countries, most pharmaceutical drug use problems result from a lack of information at one or another of the places in this chain. In each country, a national drug advisory committee should be responsible for selecting essential drugs and for coordinating activities that would improve the available information about relevant drug products. Those in charge of drug supply systems should have adequate knowledge about national drug utilization patterns and about quality assurance-sufficient for them to purchase the right quantities of low-cost, good-quality products. Prescribers - whether physicians, pharmacists, or primary health workers - should receive sound basic and ongoing training about rational drug use, and should possess a pocket prescriber's formulary. And patients should receive apropriate drug information and advice so as to ensure their intelligent compliance with the prescribed drug treatment, and so as to instill in them a responsible attitude toward use of therapeutic products. In addition, if national drug policies are to be effective, the assistance of drug advisory committees composed of well-informed and representative pharmacists and physicians in required. There is also an urgent need for clinical pharmacologists, who have an important role to play in advising on and coordinating all of these activities, but whose presence in developing countries is still the exception rather than the rule (AU)