Pharmacy-based TB therapy scheme progressing well
An initiative set up by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to provide directly observed therapy (DOT) for tuberculosis in the community is to be expanded to hospitals across the sector in Camden and Islington, Ravijyot Saggu, the clinical pharmacist involved with the project, said this week.
The scheme was set up with the aim of aiding compliance and preventing
multi-drug resistant TB developing. The TB clinic requests FP10 prescriptions
for DOT for a patient, which are sent to the relevant community pharmacy
to be dispensed. The patient then goes to the community pharmacy to collect
the treatment and the pharmacist directly observes the patient taking
the TB medication.
“Our patients are on a variety of other medicines, in particular
methadone, so the project is trying to bring the different services the
patients
need together, by sending the patients to a community pharmacy for their
TB therapy,” Ms Saggu said. “This also helps to involve community
pharmacists and increase TB awareness.”
World Stop TB Day will be marked on 24 March. One of its key objectives
is to acknowledge the effort of health care providers in putting more
than three million patients through DOT programmes every year and to
campaign for the elimination of TB. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader