Its president Lovy Beh said private healthcare was getting too expensive for most people, even for minor ailments like the common cold.
“On the other hand, the Malaysian government has continuously provided very commendable public healthcare services to the ‘rakyat’, offering better services for free or at a very nominal fee.
“Naturally, people would prefer to seek public healthcare services given the need to tighten their belts during periods of harsh economic circumstances,” she said in a statement on Saturday.
She said this in response to an FMT report on Sept 11 which cited a GP as saying that many pharmacies were now assuming the functions of doctors by diagnosing patients, recommending alternatives to prescription medicines and even dispensing medication without prescriptions.
It also quoted Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Dr Ravindran R Naidu as saying that MMA had received numerous complaints on pharmacists who were not abiding by the rules.
“Pharmacists are supposed to dispense drugs like antibiotics or drugs for treating diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol only with a doctor’s prescription,” he had said.
Beh said the MCPG agreed for the authorities to take the necessary and appropriate action on errant pharmacists if the reported allegations were true.
However, she said the guild believed community pharmacists nationwide were well within legal and ethical parameters in their general practice.
“In any profession, there will be those who flout the law but the practices of community pharmacists should not be generalised by the misconduct of such errant pharmacists,” she said.
She added that the doctors concerned should not be quick to point fingers at the pharmacists “for their own misfortunes or hardships.”
“This is a very blinkered view (so to speak) and they lose sight of the competition that is challenging them, not just from the public healthcare sector but also amongst the GPs, traditional medicine practitioners and technology,” she said.
She said there were other plausible reasons for the scenario affecting the doctors, citing “complacency with mediocre practices, little incentive to improve their practices and enhance their services to patients / customers, as well as doctors’ bedside manner” in their approach or attitude towards patients.
Beh added that the healthcare industry was affected by current economic circumstances and community pharmacists were equally facing bad times, with eight out of 10 not doing well.
She said the MCPG was ready to cooperate and collaborate with stakeholders and the
government to find a solution to any issues affecting Malaysians on healthcare.
On the issue of the proposed Pharmacy Bill which has yet to go through Parliament, Beh said MCPG unanimously supported the requirement for certain scheduled poisons to be sold only with prescriptions by registered medical practitioners.
She also said dispensing separation (DS), which would entail separating the roles of dispensing medicine, and diagnosing and prescribing medicine, between pharmacies and doctors respectively, depended on transformation in the nation’s healthcare system and whether the authorities would implement the proposed national healthcare-financing scheme.
“The DS would be consistent with Regulation (23) of the Poisons Regulations 1952, which requires a registered medical practitioner to issue a prescription according to the requirements stipulated under Section 21(2) of the Poisons Act 1952.
“This mandatory practice will safeguard the safety and interest of patients whilst, at the same time, patients are given the freedom to choose where to source for their medication,” she said.
Errant pharmacists taking ‘business’ away from clinics, say docs