Scope of pharmacy education in Pakistan

Scope of pharmacy education


Pharmacy is a discipline which has grown quickly in Pakistan. Centres for pharmacy are developing into departments, departments into institutes and institutes into faculties. It appears that in the next few years there will be pharmacy schools, colleges and universities that will produce as many pharmacists as they can.

Along with its growth, pharmacy has changed some of its forms. In the beginning it was a diploma in pharmacy, then it changed to bachelor of pharmacy, and now a doctorate in pharmacy is being introduced in various universities.

DPharm in Pakistan is a wastage of time, as well as of money, if introduced without a proper service structure because different provinces have different job structures for pharmacists.

In Punjab, drug inspectors are employed at the taluka level, but in Sindh at the district level. This discourages the pharmacists of Sindh. Moreover, hardly any pharmacist is allowed to render his services in a true sense. Pharmacists thus prefer to go abroad where they are welcomed and well-paid.

Another reason behind promoting DPharm in Pakistan is to serve the privileged ones who should find it easier to go abroad where a BPharm degree is not sufficient to get a good job and those who carry BPharm degrees have to study there for at least one more year to convert their degrees into DPharm.

Studying one year in Pakistan is easy and cheaper than in developed countries where standard and hard work both are required simultaneously. The money spent on each student of DPharm will go to benefit a foreign country.

The government should look into the matter and formulate a balanced policy keeping in view the scope of pharmacy in all the provinces.

QADEER AHMED BHUTTO

Jamshoro

10. DAMIAN AND COSMAS - PHARMACY'S PATRON SAINTS

10. DAMIAN AND COSMAS - PHARMACY'S PATRON SAINTS

Twinship of the health professions, Pharmacy and Medicine, is nowhere more strikingly portrayed than by Damian, the apothecary, and Cosmas, the physician. Twin brothers of Arabian descent, and devout Christians, they offered the solace of religion as well as the benefit of their knowledge to the sick who visited them. Their twin careers were cut short in the year 303 by martyrdom. For centuries their tomb in the Syrian city of Cyprus was a shrine. Churches were built in their honor in Rome and other cities. After canonization, they became the patron saints of Pharmacy and Medicine, and many miracles were attributed to them.

9. GALEN - EXPERIMENTER IN DRUG COMPOUNDING

9. GALEN - EXPERIMENTER IN DRUG COMPOUNDING

Of the men of ancient times whose names are known and revered among both the professions of Pharmacy and Medicine, Galen, undoubtedly, is the foremost. Galen (130-200 A.D.) practiced and taught both Pharmacy and Medicine in Rome; his principles of preparing and compounding medicines ruled in the Western world for 1,500 years; and his name still is associated with that class of pharmaceuticals compounded by mechanical means - galenicals. He was the originator of the formula for a cold cream, essentially similar to that known today. Many procedures Galen originated have their counterparts in today's modern compounding laboratories.

8. DIOSCORIDES - A SCIENTIST LOOKS AT DRUGS

8. DIOSCORIDES - A SCIENTIST LOOKS AT DRUGS

In the evolution of all successful and enduring systems of knowledge there comes a time when the observations of many men, or the intensive studies of one, transcend from the level of trade or vocation to that of a science. Pedanios Dioscorides (first century A.D.), contributed mightily to such a transition in Pharmacy. In order to study materia medica, Dioscorides accompanied the Roman armies throughout the known world. He recorded what he observed, promulgated excellent rules for collection of drugs, their storage and use. His texts were considered basic science as late as the sixteenth century.

7. TERRA SIGILLATA - AN EARLY "TRADEMARKED" DRUG

7. TERRA SIGILLATA - AN EARLY "TRADEMARKED" DRUG

Man learned early of the prestigious advantage of trademarks as a means of identification of source and of gaining customers' confidence. One of the first therapeutic agents to bear such a mark was Terra Sigillata (Sealed Earth), a clay tablet originating on the Mediterranean island of Lemnos before 500 B.C. One day each year clay was dug from a pit on a Lemnian hillside in the presence of governmental and religious dignitaries. Washed, refined, rolled to a mass of proper thickness, the clay was formed into pastilles and impressed with an official seal by priestesses, then sun-dried. The tablets were then widely distributed commercially.

6. THE ROYAL TOXICOLOGIST - MITHRIDATES VI

6. THE ROYAL TOXICOLOGIST - MITHRIDATES VI

Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (about 100 B.C.), though he battled Rome for a lifetime, found time to make not only the art of poisoning, but also the art of preventing and counteracting poisoning, subjects of intensive study. Unhesitatingly, he used himself as well as his prisoners as "guinea pigs" on which to test poisons and antidotes. Behind him are rhizotomists, offering fresh, flowering aconite, ginger, and gentian. At lower right is a crater - a two-piece forerunner of the champagne bucket. His famed formula of alleged panantidotal powers, "Mithridatum," was popular for over a thousand years.

5. THEOPHRASTUS - FATHER OF BOTANY

5. THEOPHRASTUS - FATHER OF BOTANY

Theophrastus (about 300 B.C.), among the greatest early Greek philosophers and natural scientists, is called the "father of botany." His observations and writings dealing with the medical qualities and peculiarities of herbs are unusually accurate, even in the light of present knowledge. He lectured to groups of students who walked about with him, learning of nature by observing her treasurers at firsthand. In his hands he holds a branch of belladonna. Behind him are pomegranate blooms, senna, and manuscript scrolls. Slabs of ivory, coated with colored beeswax, served the students as "slates." Writing was cut into the surface with a stylus.

4. DAYS OF THE PAPYRUS EBERS

4. DAYS OF THE PAPYRUS EBERS

Though Egyptian medicine dates from about 2900 B.C., best known and most important pharmaceutical record is the "Papyrus Ebers" (1500 B.C.), a collection of 800 prescriptions, mentioning 700 drugs. Pharmacy in ancient Egypt was conducted by two or more echelons: gatherers and preparers of drugs, and "chiefs of fabrication," or head pharmacists. They are thought to have worked in the "House of Life." In a setting such as this, the "Papyrus Ebers" might have been dictated to a scribe by a head pharmacist as he directed compounding activities in the drug room.

3. PHARMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA

3. PHARMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA

Chinese Pharmacy, according to legend, stems from Shen Nung (about 2000 B.C.), emperor who sought out and investigated the medicinal value of several hundred herbs. He reputed to have tested many of them on himself, and to have written the first Pen T-Sao, or native herbal, recording 365 drugs. Still worshiped by native Chinese drug guilds as their patron god, Shen Nung conceivably examined many herbs, barks, and roots brought in from the fields, swamps, and woods that are still recognized in Pharmacy today. In the background is the "Pa Kua," a mathematical design symbolizing creation and life. Medicinal plants include podophyllum, rhubarb, ginseng, stramonium, cinnamon bark, and, in the boy's hand, ma huang, or Ephedra.

PHARMACY IN ANCIENT BABYLONIA

2. PHARMACY IN ANCIENT BABYLONIA

Babylon, jewel of ancient Mesopotamia, often called the cradle of civilization, provides the earliest known record of practice of the art of the apothecary. Practitioners of healing of this era (about 2600 B.C.) were priest, pharmacist and physician, all in one. Medical texts on clay tablets record first the symptoms of illness, the prescription and directions for compounding, then an invocation to the gods. Ancient Babylonian methods find counterpart in today's modern pharmaceutical, medical, and spiritual care of the sick.

. BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORY

1. BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORY

From beginnings as remote and simple as these came the proud profession of Pharmacy. Its development parallels that of man. Ancient man learned from instinct, from observation of birds and beasts. Cool water, a leaf, dirt, or mud was his first soothing application. By trial, he learned which served him best. Eventually, he applied his knowledge for the benefit of others. Though the cavemen's methods were crude, many of today's medicines spring from sources as simple and elementary as those which were within reach of early man