By Neelam Rahim

People on chronic medication can now collect this medication from Post Offices around the country, but pharmacists have expressed concern. The Independent Community Pharmacy Association said in response to a media statement in Business Insider dated the 20th of June that they have problems with the announcement that the Post Office will be acting as a collection point for chronic medication.

The COO of the Association, a non-profit company representing over one-thousand-200 independently owned pharmacies, Radio Islam discusses with Ahmed Bayat.

Ahmed says, “It was the Department of Health that came up with this idea of using post offices as a pick-up point for chronic medication. We do have serious concerns about the proposal to do that. The biggest issue we have is the safety of the patient. And our mandate is to look after patients’ safety and ensure that the medication that reaches the patient is in the form that is active and effective in a pharmacy.” 

Ahmed further tells Radio Islam, “The South African Pharmacy Council heavily regulates pharmacies to comply with the good pharmacy practice, GPP. And every institution that handles medicine of any nature must comply with GPP in a setting where the medicine becomes available to the consumer. But there is no way a post office will be able to comply with any of the GPP regulations.”

One of the significant concerns is temperature control. For example, medicines must be maintained at a temperature that maintains the efficacy of the medicine. And so pharmacy’s temperatures are regulated. The ambient temperature cannot exceed 25 degrees, and fridge items must be between four and eight degrees. And there is no way that the post office can handle that. 

“There are various reasons why we have serious concerns about this move to open chronic medication post offices that pick up points for chronic medication. We have taken it up with the South African Pharmacy Council, and they have also raised their concerns. So this is not something we’re doing in isolation,” says Ahmed.

For more about this, listen to Radio Islam’s podcast below.