History records point to the Spanish flu having taken about 500 000 lives in South Africa, making us the fifth most devastated country by the highly contagious flu of the early 1900s. Now in 2020, with an advanced healthcare system and armed with a pharmacy workforce proportionally bigger and stronger than 100 years ago, we are faced with a similar pathogen yet more deadly.
South Africa’s journey to universal health care coverage, as called for in the Section 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the NDP, appears to proceed unhindered.
Since the last issue of the Pharmaciae, Council sat on two occasions and resolved on a number of matters. This article highlights some of the decisions resolved on at the October 2019 and February 2020 Council sittings. Other matters on the operations of the Office of the Registrar and the Council are covered in the articles featured in this issue of the Pharmaciae.
Pharmacy professionals, as frontline essential workers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, have a higher than normal risk of exposure to contracting the novel coronavirus causing SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. Pharmacy owners and responsible pharmacists are called upon to observe and implement guidelines and regulations on infection prevention.
The South African Pharmacy Council receives a significant number of complaints from the general public concerning dispensing errors – this article aims to highlight common errors and provide guidance for pharmacists and the industry to mitigate the situation.
After many years of simple prohibition, the world is in the process of re-evaluating its attitude to and regulation of cannabis and products made from the plant. Cannabis is widely grown, in almost all countries, and has been used for various reasons for millennia. Andy Gray of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Pharmacology Division provides a precise treatise of legislative changes around medicinal cannabis.
It is not often that all sectors of an industry come together for skills sharing, deliberations on policy and to chart a way towards a common and shared future. However, the pharmacy profession does this triennially at the National Pharmacy Conference (NPC) – with every periodic meeting being more resounding success than the previous.
Following the promulgation of the Regulations relating to continuing professional development by the Minister of Health in May 2019, the South African Pharmacy Council published the Rules relating to continuing professional development (Board Notice 179) in September 2019, paving the way for the implementation of the regulations.