Designated pharmacies to sell swine flu drug

The government on Sunday decided to allow ‘controlled sales’ of the swine flu drug down to upazilas through designated pharmacies which could be bought only on prescriptions.
‘Designated pharmacies will be allowed to sell antiviral drug oseltamivir down to upazils only on prescriptions of qualified physicians,’ the health minister, AFM Ruhal Haq, said after a meeting in his office.
The meeting decided deputy commissioners will select five pharmacies in respective districts and upazila nirbahi officers will select three pharmacies in their areas which could sell the drug.
Pharmaceutical companies will be asked to supply only the designated pharmacies with oseltamivir, commonly prescribed for swine flu treatment.
The pharmacies will be asked not to sell the drug without prescription of qualified physicians.
The civil administration and the Drug Administration will jointly monitor drug sales so that pharmacies do not go for irrational sales of the medicine.
‘We wanted to make the antiviral drug available for patients and also to check irrational sales and overuse of the medicine,’ Professor Shah Monir Hossain, the director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, told New Age.
He said the government would continue to supply public hospitals with the medicine for free distribution among patients even if its sales through pharmacies are allowed.
Sales of the drug have so far been restricted, since the swine flu emerged as a new public health concern, to ensure its smooth supply for public hospitals and to stop it from being sold on the black market.
The Bangladesh Association of Pharmaceutical Industries secretary general, Abdul Muktadir, who also attended the meeting, said seven or eight pharmaceutical companies would produce oseltamivir for supply to the designated pharmacies.
According to the official tally, two persons infected with swine flu died and 31 patients, out of 287 cases confirmed so far, were being treated in different hospitals till Sunday evening.
Professor Quazi Tarikul Islam of Dhaka Medical College Hospital said, ‘There is no reason to be panicked as the swine flu situation is not that much severe.’
The hospital received more than 1,100 persons who feared they were infected with the H1N1 virus in a week at the outpatient department, he said. ‘But we found about 100, out of the 1,100, people suspected with infection with the virus and most of them were allowed to undergo treatment at home as the level of infection was mild.’
Only one per cent of the patients infected with swine flu virus required to be admitted to hospital, he said.
Scientists said the contagious strain of H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu virus, had replaced seasonal flu virus H3N2 in the country this year.
It is yet to be proved fatal as most patients with swine flu are recovering, they said.

Courtesy of NewAgebd