Pharmacists should donate cash rather than medicines for earthquake
appeal, charity suggests
Medical supplies are needed urgently |
Pharmacists are being invited to make cash donations for medicines relief following the earthquake affecting Pakistan and its neighbours through a charity set up last year to co-ordinate UK medicines support.
The charity, International Health Partners, is also giving advice to
pharmaceutical companies that want to donate medicines so that it can
get vital supplies out to the earthquake region within a week.
Pharmaceutical companies are being asked to complete a donation form — available
on its website (www.ihpuk.org) — giving details of the generic
names of drugs they have available, the volume, dosage details and their
expiry dates.
The charity is liaising with the World Health Organization and Humanity
First which have relief teams on the ground that will inform it of the
medicines required.
Once IHP has that information it will contact those companies whose medicines
pledges match demand and start arrangements to ship supplies to where
they are needed most.
IHP director Anthony Dunnett told The Journal this week: “At the
moment we want to know from the industry what they can offer. Our priority
is to get the volume of medicines which are most needed out there in
the first month.
“Any donations which individual pharmacists make we will be able
to [use] filling in any of the gaps in the medicines required and those
already
donated by the industry.”
The charity is also having talks with community pharmacists Shaon Talukder
and Helen Roberts who were behind a fund raising drive to buy emergency
medicine supply packs for the tsunami relief earlier this year.
Donations from that appeal brought in around £10,000 which was
increased to around £30,000 by “fund matching” organised
through IHP.
Now locum pharmacist Mr Talukder is in talks with the charity to help
set up a permanent scheme where donations from the profession can fund
continuing supplies of emergency health packs to countries around the
world whenever they are needed — not only during appeals for emergency
relief.
The talks are going on as IHP launches its Doctors
Travel Pack initiative — an
emergency health pack containing more than 35 different medicines with
a wholesale value of more than £2,750.
The pack has been designed to help an individual doctor meet all immediate
primary health care needs when working in any part of the developing
world.
The pack has been created following donations from more than 20 UK pharmaceutical
companies. The first 50 packs are expected to be distributed before Christmas. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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