Doctors found ignorant of medicinal formulae

A number of doctors in the federal capital were discovered to be unapprised of generic names of the medicines to write on the prescriptions as per directions of the Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan (DRAP), an official said on Monday.

DRAP had stopped the doctors from writing the advertised brand names of drugs while prescribing them to patients and instead directed them to mention the chemicals involved. However, most of the medical practitioners were found ignorant of it.

The doctors at public hospitals have started taking the help of the pharmacists to recall the generic names of medicines as most of them could only recall medicines by brand names.

Sources told The Express Tribune that several medical practitioners did not know of drugs by their chemical components and instead relied on brand names while writing prescriptions to patients, however, they have now been banned to do so by DRAP.

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Therefore, the move has forced them to approach pharmacists to learn the generic names. The head of a pharmacy department of a public hospital told The Express Tribune that the doctors were provided with a list of chemical names of drugs every month yet they still restored to write brand names on the prescriptions.

He hailed DRAP’s move and said it would break the hegemony of pharmaceutical giants and would ultimately benefit the patients.

Notably, DRAP Pharmacy Services Head Dr Abdul Rasheed had taken notice of the issue and issued a letter to secretaries of all provinces, Islamabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan to stop the practice of prescribing brand names of drugs.

The authority had directed the secretaries to take the required action for the implementation of the orders.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2021.