Doctor Decries Drug Hawking

A Port Harcourt- based medi
cal doctor, Okechukwu Chukwuka, has decried the drug hawking trend in the state.
Dr Chukwuka, a specialist in family medicine,  in  a chat stated that “drugs are not supposed to be hawked especially not on buses and motor parks”.
He explained that hawking could cause the drugs to lose their efficacy, stating that, “ drugs should be kept in an ambient temperature”, and sold where they can be appropriately supervised by relevant government agencies.
He noted that there were people designated to sell drugs, these he said were the patent medicine dealers and the pharmaceutical stores, “even the patent medicine dealers have limited type of drugs they can sell and to the appropriate  persons too”, he added.
He observed that the drugs sold by these hawkers, cause more problems  saying that they sell  “one drug cure all”, type of drugs adding that the drugs are also given in sub-optimal doses, which complicates even the simplest cases.
“The drugs are given in sub-optimal doses and of course most of the organism will start to develop resistance, the unsuspecting public will take it because they are not informed, this is most likely to complicate health matters because most of the time they will give a prescription not in the appropriate doses and this can lead to drug abuse and misuse”, he said
He emphasized that drug hawkers are definitely illegal and brings about more difficult situation in simple cases, “take for instance malaria, they give you a particular drug in a sub-optimal dose, of course the symptoms will abate, but the person dose not get were because the symptoms have been subdued and altered.
Chukwuka stated that this would bring about a challenge and confusion about what to do, which would lead to making the patient undergo unnecessary laboratory investigations and incur unnecessary costs, where the patient would needed just a simple management regime”.
He advised that drugs should be bought only from the appropriate places and to get an evidence-based medical assistance.

Tonye Nria-Dappa