Chief Pharmacist Errol Thomas has said that there is legislation being drafted to provide for the monitoring of medical drugs that come into the island.
Thomas told media recently that though there is no specific law as yet regarding the importation of these drugs. He said the Ministry of Health has the mandate to ensure that all medicines being brought into the island are safe and effective.
“There are no specific laws detailing the importation of drugs. What we have in place is that pharmacists, doctors, medical practitioners are the ones who import drugs really and truly into the country. Well there is no monitoring going on at the ports of entry,” he said.
“We have legislation that’s in draft and within that legislation we have provisions for a drug inspector just as the other islands; that’s international where a drug inspector would monitor the practice and importation of these things, yet we don’t have one specifically to do that. But the Ministry of Health really has the mandate to ensure that all medicines that are being brought to the country are safe and effective,” he stated.
He added, “The biggest concern I have is not really with the importers of the health professionals but my biggest concern is that other persons who mean well who want to just bring medicines to the country [to] donate it and…they mean well but these medicines are either expired or are samples. Those are the biggest concerns really that we have right now.”
what about looking into the”” medicinal value of ganja”” that the poor man getting persecuted for, i am not talking about smokeing it’ oh! i forgot ‘too many poor people would benefit! sh^*^t am emmh! Medicinal “Drugs”eh? oh yeah! that is bigman business. how you going to regulate it? you want to loose your job?WITH THAT SAID; you have my support BOSS. GO for it.
Brilliant move and i love the governments renewed focus on health and education.I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the reason why our hospitals and clinics are always so full every morning and that people never seem to be getting any better.
There’s big money being made in the fake ‘legal’ drug trade. I wish we had some journalists with Lennox Linton-like passion to do serious investigative journalism on these bogus weakened down drugs that have infiltrated our stocks! Our lives are depending on it!
Good move!
The Inspector and his staff have to be paid big salaries adding to the cost of the already expensive drugs. Maybe the Chief Pharmacist want to give his friend a job.
This is a good initiative by the Gov’t and the medical association and should be applauded. I wonder who will criticise this move now?