Sec­re­tary of the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Leah Sankers­ingh, says phar­ma­cists have tra­di­tion­al­ly been among the most pas­sive of health­care pro­fes­sion­als, of­ten fo­cus­ing on their cus­tomers while ne­glect­ing their own con­cerns.

But she said this has been chang­ing.

“We would hear of protests by nurs­es and doc­tors, but not phar­ma­cists.

“We are the most ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic, and our con­sul­ta­tions are free,” she said.

Sankers­ingh made the state­ment in her re­port at the as­so­ci­a­tion’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tion of of­fi­cers at Val­park Chi­nese Restau­rant, Val­park, last week.

She said that while most phar­ma­cists gen­uine­ly care for their cus­tomers and of­ten go the ex­tra mile in coun­selling and sourc­ing prod­ucts, they have al­so been fac­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, our pas­siv­i­ty has led us to be­ing op­pressed by of­fi­cials who cre­at­ed rules and poli­cies with­out con­sul­ta­tion. The sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed to some phar­ma­cies be­ing raid­ed by po­lice and Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials, who seized items they claimed were un­reg­is­tered,” she said.

“This pushed a small group of re­tail (com­mu­ni­ty) phar­ma­cists who said enough is enough, and they got to­geth­er to form the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA), led by Glen­wayne Su­chit, to rep­re­sent re­tail phar­ma­cies.”

Sankers­ingh said the as­so­ci­a­tion be­gan by send­ing nu­mer­ous let­ters to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, to “save our pro­fes­sion and liveli­hood.”

She said the as­so­ci­a­tion sought meet­ings to dis­cuss a wide range of is­sues, in­clud­ing drug reg­is­tra­tion and the list of reg­is­tered drugs, CDAP, pric­ing struc­ture, con­trol and dis­counts, the sale of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to unau­tho­rised es­tab­lish­ments, and the al­leged mo­nop­oly on for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“Some of their let­ters were ig­nored with no re­ply. Oth­ers promised meet­ings but nev­er fol­lowed up, while some met with us but did not take us se­ri­ous­ly,” she said.

“To add to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s frus­tra­tion, some mem­bers com­plained that no let­ters were writ­ten.”

Sankers­ingh said phar­ma­cists even­tu­al­ly had no choice but to make some of their con­cerns pub­lic.

How­ev­er, she praised Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health Dr Rishad Seecha­ran, who met with the as­so­ci­a­tion with­in their first 100 days in of­fice.

She said this en­gage­ment has led to a promis­ing fu­ture, and phar­ma­cists now feel they are be­ing seen and heard.

Mean­while, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Glen­wayne Su­chit re­mind­ed the Gov­ern­ment of the ur­gent need to dis­man­tle what he de­scribed as the grow­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals mo­nop­oly in T&T.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion’s coun­cil is prepar­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to up­date the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal laws and en­sure that re­tail phar­ma­cists and phar­ma­cies are in­clud­ed in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.