Docs: Why the secrecy on Bill?

Kota Kinabalu: Doctors, dentists and vets have demanded that the proposed Pharmacy Bill be declassified and made transparent for public knowledge and feedback.They are apparently shocked over what they claim is the secretive manner in which it was hastily conceptualised and is now being fine-tuned in the Attorney-General chambers under the protection of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

Towards that aim, a unity road show by doctors from West Malaysia led by Dr Mior Mohd Yusuf bin Adnan and Dr Aman Shah of the Medical Practitioners Coalition Association of Malaysia and Pertubuhan Doktor-Doktor Islam Malaysia was held here for the first time.

They seek Sabah's professional groups and the public to vie in the political arena and other avenues to forward their strong reservations in the interest of public safety, convenience and well-being.

The doctors were responsible for helping to delay the passing of the Bill in the current parliamentary session, campaigning for it to be open for scrutiny and how it could affect the general public.

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The proposed Bill will consolidate and repeal four existing Bills - Poison Act 1952 (Revised 1989), Sales of Drugs Act 1952, Registration of Pharmacist Act 1951 and Medicines Advertisement & Sales Act 1956. Patients prescription would have to be sourced at pharmacies unlike current practice.

Doctors here concurred that the majority of the rural population in Sabah and Sarawak would suffer the higher healthcare costs and inconvenience of finding the nearest pharmacy. Not only that, charitable bodies like Lions, Rotary, and other groups would be deterred from distributing medical items in their rural mission outreach and programmes.

They cited how Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia had a bad case of gout in the United States and experienced first-hand the inconvenience that dispensation separation between doctors and pharmacists create.

"We need to fight the political battle from the top, as the proposed Bill once it became law like other Bills in Malaysia, it would be very difficult to change."

It is believed that a chain store pharmacy group and a cooperative business group were set to open thousands of outlets nationwide in zones to be determined and approved by the Ministry of Health, with little interest to prevent the escalation of health care costs to be borne by the public on top of the GST burden on costs of living.

They are not happy with how the legislation was justified in sham on-line survey by the Pharmacy Services Department of the Ministry of Health in which 95 per cent of the respondents were pharmacists themselves and how the proposed Bill kept in secret without being open for scrutiny by affected stakeholders and the public for feedback.

Doctors through their own initiatives embarked on two more professional public surveys and found that more than eighty to ninety per cent of the public were against the dispensation separation when their interests were not prioritised.

"This is not a war on protecting the rice-bowl of doctors, fighting with the pharmacists over dispensing rights as being portrayed. We must resist the divide and rule attempt to divide the professionals. It is about protecting the interest of the public in being able to have access to reasonably priced healthcare services in a convenient way. We are doing this for public interest."

Dr Mior opined that if dispensing separation is implemented, it would raise the costs of medical consultation as well as inconveniencing the public having to seek out pharmacies in their zone approved to dispense medicine.

He and Dr Aman regretted how the government rejected outright option proposals like in Hong Kong, which had rejected dispensing separation, to have doctors employ or train an assistant pharmacist in their clinics to dispense medicine.

Asked if the government could consent to a hybrid system whereby the public would have a choice as to where to obtain their medicine after consulting their doctor, they said if the public were happy, doctors would be too.

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In reality studies in many countries have shown that like in Korea, healthcare costs would appreciate when pharmacists and doctors make even more money charging their patients for higher professional consultation fees.

The doctors said besides wanting the Pharmacy Bill to be declassified, they also want details to highlight the incompatibility with existing Acts, to conduct extensive stakeholders discussion and consultations before implementation, to include public involvement as the public is the biggest stakeholders, to ensure that healthcare costs do not rise as a consequence of the proposed change as seen in the Taiwan and Korea experiences, to minimise double taxation on pharmacists and doctors, to protect the healthcare of the common people by ensuring the lower socio economic groups as well as the marginalised have equitable access to healthcare at the most convenient way, and to maintain the highest healthcare attainable for the country at the lowest costs possible.

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