Pharmacists get training to improve service

If you’ve ever walked out of a pharmacy in Belize not so sure if the medication you’re holding is still “good” or feeling like you’re not quite sure how you’re supposed to take it, you might want to listen up. For the past 2 weeks, 5 Belizean pharmacists have been learning how to improve their service to customers as well as how to check to make sure that the products they and other pharmacists dispense, are viable. Sharon Sanchez, Chief Pharmacist for the Ministry of Health says accountability is the name of the game.

Sharon Sanchez, Chief Pharmacist for Ministry of Health

“Basically what the training involved was Mr. Crawford used in the international standards as the guideline to equip us with the skills of going into a pharmacy and look at its overall structure, the practices within to ensure their ledgers are up to date, so you have accountability. So over the past two weeks, we visited both the private and public enterprises as well as the warehouses to ensure that the storage of pharmaceuticals are done in an appropriate manner. We all know that drugs are labeled with an expiry date but those expiration dates are dependent on the factors under which it is stored. So if drugs are not stored properly, even though an expiry date is there, it could have lost its potency before that expiration date. So it’s our duty to ensure that where pharmaceuticals are concerned, that it is being prescribed properly, that the patient is equipped with the knowledge to use it properly, stored properly so at the end the therapeutic benefits that we know pharmaceuticals can give is guaranteed.”

Belize’s drug laws date back to 1958 with very few amendments since. The 5 participants in the workshop were pharmacists Dana El Amin, Marietta Enriquez, Geraldine Graham, Magdalane Williams and Leza Smith. Funding for the training exercise was made available by the Ministry of Health, PAHO-Belize and PAHO-Barbados.