Friday 29 Mar 2024
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PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry has yet to decide on the proposal for doctors to diagnose while pharmacists dispense medicine, its minister, Datuk Seri Dr S Subramaniam, told Parliament yesterday.

But he seemed to imply that a decision would be put off to a later date when he said that the “doctors diagnose, pharmacists dispense” system could probably work when the healthcare system had gone through a transformation.

He said that the aim of the proposal was to increase the standard of pharmacists and this development would eventually benefit the people. He said this system was already practised in advanced economies such as the United States and Britain.

“But the ministry will not make any decision that will burden the people in terms of convenience or cost.

“In the future, when the health system has been transformed and this is suitable, we can look into it. But for now there is no decision … we are in discussions and the final decision will take into account the needs of the end-user,” he said.

Subramaniam, in answering a question by Datuk Seri Abdul Ghapur Salleh (BN-Kalabakan) on the method used by the ministry to control the prices of drugs for chronic illnesses, said that although the prices of medicines were not controlled, the ministry was always monitoring prices and the recommended retail prices were available on the government’s pharmacy website.

He also said that the ministry was looking at printing the recommended retail prices on the medicines’ packaging, but added that this was subject to discussions with the Malaysia Competition Commission.— The Malaysian Insider

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on March 18, 2015.

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