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Letters to the Editor
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Drug donations
Not a dumping ground
From Miss V. Parker, MRPharmS
Having just read the letters in The Journal of 9 October 2004, I would
like to share my experiences of drug donations in a developing country.
For the past 22 months I have worked as a VSO volunteer in a district
hospital in Ifakara, Southern Tanzania. I have just spent the last week,
together with five colleagues, sorting through almost 100 boxes of drug
donations from Italy. Not only had the vast majority of these medicines
already expired (many as long ago as September 2003), many were wholly
inappropriate for use in our hospital. We also had to pay for their storage
and transport from Dar es Salaam.
Among the items I consider inappropriate were camouflage cream (for white
skin), statins (we do not have the facilities to measure cholesterol),
over 100 bottles of St John’s wort, two crates of epoprostenol
infusion, 100 boxes of shampoo sachets and wet wipes (inside boxes labelled
as containing Valsartan capsules). Drugs which could be used are rendered
less useful by the fact that we receive free samples. Often such boxes
contain seven or more blisters but not all of the blisters contain tablets.
One must therefore open every box and play a guessing game to find out
which blisters contain a tablet and which ones air. We have had numerous
occasions when patients have returned with blister packs to say there
was only one dose present when we believed the pack to be full. This
increases not only our transport costs (due to the large number of boxes)
but also our workload by having to inspect every strip individually.
On top of all this we receive no English translations, which often causes
us huge problems.
I was pleased to read about Intercare. It is through companies such as
these that donations should be made. If donations are to be sent, donors
should consider what they are sending, the disease pattern at the medicine’s
destination and the quantities sent. We may be poorer than the Western
world, but we are not a dumping ground for unwanted free samples.
Victoria Parker
Ifakara, Tanzania
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal