*KARACHI: Medication errors including misspelled prescriptions, lookalikemedicines and other mistakes committed by the healthcare providers arekilling at least a half a million people in Pakistan every year, saidexperts.*
Speaking at a reception hosted in the honour of eminent pharmacist andPresident of Pakistan Society of Health-System Pharmacists (PSHP) AbdulLatif Sheikh, who was awarded with the prestigious Donald E Francke Medaland Award, Sindh Health Secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho said that there wereat least 50 pharmacists hired for the Civil Hospital Karachi alone by thegovernment, but were not being consulted by the doctors and hospitalmanagement to utilise their expertise in saving patients’ lives.
In his address, Mr. Sheikh said that as many as 500,000 people wereannually killed in healthcare facilities in Pakistan due to medicationerrors but lives of these people could be saved by adopting the modernclinical pharmacy practices.
Dr Pechuho recalled an incident, saying: “A few months back, a German ladycame to me at my office and complained that her husband was killed due tothe medication error in the city. When we investigated the matter, itappeared that somebody gave anti-cancer medicine to her husband instead ofanti-hypertension medicine because the packaging of both the medicines wassimilar. The German man could not understand English language and byconsuming wrong medicine, he died,” Pechuho told participants.
He maintained that the government was trying to introduce clinical pharmacyservices and practices at the public hospitals throughout the province andin this regard, consultation with pharmacy council, associations ofpharmacists, the pharmaceutical industry and private sector would bestarted soon to achieve the important milestone in the health sector.