I have a great job. It is certainly the most challenging I have had. But it’s great. It is pretty unique in Australia and as a result I get asked to participate on a number of committees and reviews. There are also a few articles written in a number of pharmacy journals or magazines that include a bit about me or from me.
One article was titled “Shock and Awe” about remote Indigenous Health, written by Fran Molloy.
Andrew Roberts lost his real name on his first day in his new job “out bush” as a remote area pharmacist. His workplace spans a quarter of a million kilometres in Central Australia — and there, for the last four years, he’s been known simply as “Robbo”.
When he first introduced himself as Andrew, the local Aboriginal health worker responded, horrified, “That’s a Kunmarnarra name!”
Anyway, I thought some outside pharmacy may be interested in the read.
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I don’t get into civilisation much. This November when I venture out of the desert I will be a little busy.
I will be in Perth for six and Adelaide for two and a bit days to attend the SHPA Conference and give a few presentations.
Send me an email or a ‘tweet’ to @BiteTheDust if you want to catch up
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Way back in 1997 I first came into contact with the Practical Pharmacy newsletter. The October -December issue was titled “Drug Information for Health Workers: Giving Out Medications”. The next I heard of it was in 2008 with the new title “Practical Pharmacy for Developing Countries” with an issue focusing on Tuberculosis.
Then nothing. I wondered what happened to it. I had forgotten who produced it. However the latest edition, Practical Pharmacy - Antiseptics and Disinfectants (325) (1MB PDF) arrived in my email today and I thought I should give it a plug.
Hopefully it will be a quarterly publication produced by Health Action International Africa and a number of partners. Fifteen issues were produced between 1996 and 2000 with a circulation of 4000. Unfortunately they could not keep publishing the newsletter and it lay dormant until 1996.
… years have passed since the last edition of Practical Pharmacy. However, the needs it addressed still exist. Many health workers in developing countries still have no specific training in pharmacy and have no information to help them in their day to day work. They need tools and resources to help them manage medicine supplies, to prescribe medicines appropriately and to help their patients understand how to use medicines appropriately.
More than half of all medicines are prescribed, dispensed or sold inappropriately, and half of all patients fail to take them correctly. The over-use, under-use or misuse of medicines results in wastage of scarce resources, especially in developing countries. In addition, using medicines improperly increases the risk of people falling sick and dying of illness, as well as resistance of disease-causing microbes to available treatments.
Early editions focused on the basic but essential skills for medicine management in a remote or under resourced health centre setting such as storage and stock control of medications. Newer editions will have a more patient centred focus.
You can subscribe by emailing practicalpharmacy@gmail.com
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Urinary alkalinisers are used to relieve the discomfort associated with urinary tract infections, help treat certain types of renal stones, or may be used in the specialist setting to treat some metabolic and renal disorders.
The E-Bulletin contains a table of some of the drugs that may interact (some quite dramatically) with urinary alkalinisers.
Download the RGH E-Bulletin: Drug Interactions with Urinary Alkalinisers (766)
The 2009 RGH E-Bulletins are archived here.
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Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.
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