Cancer cases are rising in developing countries which are already grappling with high levels of infectious diseases including human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. The United Nations (UN) including the World Health Organisation (WHO) have called on member states to establish strategies to deal with the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases, including cancer, in developing countries. The complexity of cancer care and management calls for innovative approaches in low resource settings especially since these settings are already grappling with huge challenges in healthcare including lack of funds, weak human resource base and lack of treatment guidelines. Whilst the cost of medications is by no means the only high cost in cancer care, the availability of affordable anti-cancer generic drugs and biologically similar therapeutic agents (biosimilars) will go a long way to reduce overall cost of cancer care. The high cost of anticancer medicines has been cited among the reasons whilst patients default in treatment. Non-proprietary anti-cancer agents--generics and biosimilars--often cost several times lower than their innovator branded counterparts. They can reduce the cost of care significantly and their multi-source origin often provide guarantee in supply. The use of generic and biosimilar products is hinged on the assumption that they are of assured quality and of the same pharmaceutical integrity as their innovator counterparts. The use of these products however is associated with challenges that must be understood and addressed. The quality of all generics and biosimilars should be rigorously controlled and assured. Measures to prevent counterfeit and sub-standard generics and biosimilars should be developed and the cold-chain must be maintained for all biosimilars. In addition to these, the WHO is encouraged to develop a prequalification scheme to assist countries without strong regulatory systems to procure anticancer generics and biosimilars of assured quality.
Background: Errors occur frequently in the use of medicines. Pharmacists play a key role in error identification and make appropriate interventions as they work with other healthcare professionals. These error recovery roles of pharmacists contribute to patient safety. This study was to evaluate the clinical interventions made to drug-related problems at a tertiary care setting. Method: This involved a retrospective review of clinical intervention reports submitted by pharmacists working over the period January 2011 to December 2013. Results: The 24 pharmacists submitted 529 handwritten reports; of these, 448 reports had complete data. The most frequently reported drugs with error were warfarin (9.5%), potassium chloride (6.0%) and potassium citrate (5.5%). The pharmacists made 1019 clinical interventions and recommendations. The average intervention per report was 2.5 (S.D ± 0.67). The interventions and recommendations made were categorised as drug regimen change (76.1%), monitoring required (13.0%), communication (5.4%), counselling required (5.0%) and adverse drug reporting (0.6%). Majority (90.5%) of the recommendations and interventions made by pharmacists were accepted and implemented. Monitoring-required based interventions were significantly more likely to be accepted (130 vs 38; p <0.0001). Conclusion: Pharmacists played a role in drug error recovery and prevented medication errors from reaching patients. These error mitigation efforts of pharmacists can serve as a priority in patient safety strategy.
Background: Hypertensive and heart failure patients frequently require multiple drug therapy which may be associated with drug-related problems (DRPs). Aim: To determine the frequency, types, and predictors of DRPs, and acceptance of pharmacists' interventions among hospitalized hypertensive and heart failure patients. Method: It was a prospective cross-sectional study at the internal medicine department wards of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) between January and June 2019 using a validated form (the pharmaceutical care form used by clinical pharmacists at the medical department). DRPs were classified based on the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE) Classification scheme for DRPs V8.02. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. Results: A total of 247 DRPs were identified in 134 patients. The mean number of DRPs was 1.84 (SD: 1.039) per patient. Most DRPs occurred during the prescribing process (40.5%; n(DRPs) = 100), and the highest prescribing problem was untreated indication (11.7%; n = 29). Other frequent DRPs were medication counseling need (25.1%; n = 62), administration errors 10.1%(n = 25), drug interaction (10.5%; n = 26), and "no" or inappropriate monitoring (10.5%; n = 26
Background: In many resource-constrained countries, control of blood pressure (BP) is low. Antihypertensive drug prescribing practices may influence BP control.However, adherence of prescribing to treatment guidelines may not be optimal in resource-constrained settings. The aim of this study was to evaluate the pattern of blood pressure-lowering medication prescribing, and how it adheres to treatment guidelines, and to identify the relationship between medication prescriptions and BP control. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study of hypertensive outpatients at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) Family Medicine department (FMD)/Polyclinic. Data was collected with a validated structured form. Adherence of "prescribing" to recommendations of the 2017 Standard Treatment Guidelines of Ghana and 2018European Society of Cardiology guidelines was assessed using a composite measure.We analyzed data with SPSS.Results: About 81% (247/304) of patients received two or more antihypertensive drugs. Most patients (41%; 267/651) received calcium channel blockers (CCB), and 21.8% (142/651), 15.7% (102/651) and 12.7% (83/651) were on diuretics, angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors respectively. CCB plus RAS inhibitor (50%) was the most prescribed twodrug combination. Number of BP drugs per patient had a statistically significant inverse relationship with BP control (beta Coefficient = -0.402; 95% Cl: 1.252-2.470; p = 0.015). The composite adherence score was 0.73 (moderate adherence) but Single-pill combination (SPC) was poor (3.2%; n = 8). Conclusion:Most patients received multiple-pill combination treatment, and overall adherence to guidelines was suboptimal, largely owing to complex drug therapy.Number of drugs predicted BP control. Our findings suggest a need to prioritize simplified treatment, and implement other strategies to improve hypertension
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