Monkeys also resort to aromatherapy. When Capuchins, a type of new world monkeys in the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica  use citrus fruits, notably lemons, limes and oranges, during the rainy season.Either applied directly, or mixed with saliva, the citrus oils help fight bacterial and fungal infections and repel insects. Their cousins in central Venezuela, the weeper Capuchins, like to paste themselves with the secretions of millipedes, which act as an antiseptic and repel mosquitoes and ticks.

In 1987, Prof Michael Huffman happened to be watching a constipated chimpanzee called Chausiku in the dense rainforest of the Mahale mountains in western Tanzania.By seeing a noxious tree shoot that chimps would normally avoid, Chausiku peeled it and sucked its bitter pith. Within a day, her constipation was gone. It was the first time a scientist had seen a sick chimp select an unsavoury plant known by humans to have medicinal properties, and then recover.

 The pith, from the tree Vernonia amygdalina, has now given up its secrets. It contains compounds active against many of the parasites responsible for malaria, dysentery and schistosomiasis. Prof Huffman has found that nearly all of the ape remedies he has studied are also used by local people as medicine.

Dear readers, This time I would like to write up on an interesting topic which was reported by the famous, Roger Highfield. In his one of articles he was saying that monkeys were the first doctors and pharmacists! Evidence has emerged that humans learned the medicinal properties of soil and plants from fellow primates.

When we look back at the history of medicine, we think of the clever people who have, over thousands of years, devised the methods to reduce the human suffering. But to find the real fathers of the healing arts, we should look millions of years further back - to our hairy relatives i.e the apes.

Bright coloured insects can help to discover new drugs for cancer and some other ailments! The find is reported by Ms Julie Helson and Todd Capson of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama City, in the Ecological Society of America’s journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Scientists are already seeking inspiration for the next generation of drugs from traditional medicines used by witch doctors and by shaman, even treatments used by apes for parasites and other ailments. Now they can add insects to their list of prospectors for new medicines.

One of the recent concerns regarding the field of cancer study or Oncology is the increasing number of women who are being diagnosed with Cancer. It is estimated that the number of cervical cancer deaths in women in India is likely to rise to 79,000 by the year 2010, while the number of deaths due to breast cancer and oral cancer would rise to 59,000 and 53,000 respectively. As the numbers indicate, cervical cancer is the most dangerous among others. Most number of women deaths reported in India are mainly due to this dangerous forms of cancer.

In the UK, the Government has recognised the importance of the pharmacist’s role and provides funding to hospices to enable them to purchase pharmaceutical advice. This advice, which may be provided by either hospital or community pharmacists, consists of individual patient prescription monitoring, recommendations for formularies, advice on medicines policies, discharge planning and the use of patients’ own drugs and advice on stock control and the safe storage, administration and disposal of medicines Many patients, especially towards the end of life, have their medicines administered over24 hours through a syringe driver. There is little published data available on the compatibility of different injectable medicines in a syringe driver and pharmacists are often asked for professional advice on the stability and suitability of combinations of two, three and even four drugs in a syringe.

3. Specific preparations and products

In the consequent blogs, I will mainly emphasize on the role of the pharmacist in palliatve care and it is aimed at offering the highest possible level of comfort to the patient during the last phase of his life. Technical and excessively prolonged treatment has to be avoided as much as possible, allowing the patient to lead as normal a life as possible.

1. A relationship, based on trust, with the patient and his family