S African Pharmacists Seek new Role

Plans to extend the role of pharmacists in South Africa were contained within a Pharmacy Amendment Act put before the parliament last year, but this has now been postponed following the election of the country's first democratic government earlier this year.

Leah Gilbert of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg told the Social Pharmacy Workshop held in Berlin, germany, that pharmacy in South Africa is a profession in transition, reports the Pharmaceutical Journal. Pharmacists feel that they are overtrained for what they do and underutilized in what they know, she said, and it is widely believed that the future of the profession will be determined by its ability to become "reprofessionalized" and to shift its emphasis to a professional health care service function, based on its specific expertise.

Interviews conducted by Dr Gilbert with pharmacists have shown that while on the whole they are keen to play a major part in primary health care, 65% of those interviewed felt that they had not been adequately trained for this purpose. They also felt a conflict between the desire to expand their role as health care professionals and their current reality, which they described as "glorified shop owners dispensing prescriptions."