The Pharmaceutical Care For Diabetic Patients : Community Pharmacists Effort In India

The Pharmaceutical Care is an important health care intervention which is mandatory for quality use of medicine. The Patients are supposed to get all the practical information regarding the drugs they are prescribed by doctors.

The community pharmacist is the globally accepted professional to cater the pharmaceutical care to the patients at the time of dispensing the medicine it self. The World Health Organization in collaboration with Federation International Pharmacy has come out with a model to provide the pharmaceutical care. In this patients are advised regarding how to store and use medicines. They are also supposed to advice regarding Life style factors and disease specific factors. This will correct the wrong practices in medicine usage and make the patient a partner in his improvement of health.

Unfortunately the community pharmacy services are not existent in our country for patients. In order to cater the unmet demand for pharmaceutical care Association of community pharmacist of India in collaboration with Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences & Manipal College of Nursing of Manipal University provided the door to door pharmaceutical care to the members of diabetic club promoted by Sri A V Baliga Memorial Hospital Udupi.

The pharmaceutical Care consisted of checking and documenting the Blood Pressure, Body Mass Index and Blood sugar monitoring by Glucometer. The checking of the medicine and detailing the prescription to the patients. Advising the patient on the matters of diet , exercise in control of Hypertension and Diabetes. The Patients were also informed about the danger signals of the disease they must always look for and in case of such event, they should immediately contact their doctor with our delay. The 48 patients were covered in the program.

The program was launched by Prof N. Udupa, Principal MCOPS and Sri U R Acharya Chairman, Smt Kamal Baliga Trust, Udupi in the auditorium of Baliga Hospital on 13^th April 2008.

The program being continuous one all the patients were advised to meet the pharmacists on every Saturday evening OPD of AV Baliga Memorial Hospital.