DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Phar­ma­cy Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent An­drew Ra­haman is urg­ing the Min­istry of Health (MoH) to spend its time beef­ing up the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion, rather than seiz­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals from com­pa­nies.

Ra­haman’s com­ment fol­lows the TTPS’ seizure of an es­ti­mat­ed $1.5M in drugs from a ware­house in Trinci­ty on Fri­day. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, called Op­er­a­tion Wind­sor, $10M worth of drugs were al­so quar­an­tined due to the lack of a Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Whole­sale Li­cence.

The TTPS did not name the busi­ness but said a ‘cos­met­ic com­pa­ny’ was in breach of the Food and Drugs Act Chap­ter 30:01, which man­dat­ed that all drugs be reg­is­tered be­fore be­ing sold.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ra­haman ques­tioned why small phar­ma­cies were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for items that were al­so sold by larg­er ones.

“Stand alone phar­ma­cies that are bare­ly sur­viv­ing have been tar­get­ed and have been ha­rassed and I am say­ing that the min­istry could bet­ter spend its time reg­is­ter­ing drugs—ap­pli­ca­tions that they have be­fore them—be­cause hu­man re­sources are a lim­it­ed re­source, fund­ing is a lim­it­ed re­source. So, if we were talk­ing about items where it is coun­ter­feit or items that are adul­ter­at­ed items, then I could un­der­stand pri­ori­tis­ing go­ing to ha­rass the phar­ma­cies. But where we are talk­ing about Emer­gen-C and Im­mune C and DayQuil and NyQuil, things that peo­ple can have no ques­tion what­so­ev­er about, I think the pri­or­i­ty should lead in the di­rec­tion of stay­ing in the min­istry and hav­ing the meet­ings to reg­is­ter the drugs. The oth­er large chain that you can go and get it, there’s not an is­sue with them?” he said.

Ra­haman al­so echoed the sen­ti­ments of Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Busi­ness Cham­ber pres­i­dent Glen­wayne Su­chit, who not­ed the reg­is­tra­tion process was like pulling teeth. Ra­haman said it was te­dious to reg­is­ter items as com­mon as Vicks and Nyquil.

“Who will ques­tion the au­then­tic­i­ty of Mucinex, of Ro­bi­tussin, of DayQuil, Vicks or NyQuil? So, the prod­ucts are ex­cel­lent prod­ucts sold in phar­ma­cies in first-world coun­tries and the prob­lem is reg­is­tra­tion,” he said.

“They (phar­ma­cists) are try­ing their best, or have been over the years, try­ing their best to reg­is­ter the drugs and be­cause it is be­ing made so dif­fi­cult to get it reg­is­tered by the min­istry, they make it eas­i­er to do the wrong thing, which is get it and sell it be­cause we are not talk­ing about prod­ucts that are made in some garage in Bar­ba­dos or some­thing like that, or some oth­er coun­try or in Trinidad. We are talk­ing about drugs made by mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar com­pa­nies that spare no ef­fort to have close to per­fect drugs.”

As for the ex­pired drugs that were re­port­ed­ly seized, Ra­haman said there are three le­git­i­mate rea­sons to keep them. He said un­der the law, phar­ma­cists can­not de­stroy an­tibi­otics. They must keep them for in­spec­tors to write them off be­fore they them­selves dis­pose them. He added that whole­salers re­quire ex­pired drugs for re­turns, and the An­tibi­ot­ic Act ac­knowl­edges the use­ful­ness of ex­pired drugs.

“So, I want the pub­lic to be ... not to be jit­tery about tak­ing their med­ica­tion. It is not a preva­lent thing that they are get­ting ex­pired drugs from the phar­ma­cies and in any event, I want the pub­lic to recog­nise that if a drug has 500 mil­ligrammes of some­thing that is life-sav­ing for them and they can’t get it any­where else, on the day af­ter ex­piry, it has 500 mil­ligrammes still,” he said.

Un­der sec­tion 16 (2) of the An­tibi­otics Act, ex­pired an­tibi­otics can be sold to a med­ical prac­ti­tion­er, den­tist or vet­eri­nary sur­geon who has been in­formed in writ­ing about the sta­tus of the drug. How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that changes in chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion can oc­cur in ex­pired drugs which may pose a se­ri­ous threat to the health of the pub­lic.

Mean­while, the min­istry yes­ter­day said un­der sec­tion 3 of the Food and Drug Act, Chap 30:01, all new drug sub­mis­sions and sup­ple­men­tal drug sub­mis­sions—changes to pack­ag­ing, la­belling and place of man­u­fac­ture—must be reg­is­tered. This is manda­to­ry for any drug to be im­port­ed, stored, sold or dis­trib­uted for pub­lic con­sump­tion, the min­istry said in a re­lease.

It said phar­ma­cists must sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion form and tech­ni­cal drug doc­u­ments be­fore a screen­ing process is con­duct­ed by the min­istry to en­sure com­pli­ance, safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy of all drugs utilised by the pop­u­la­tion. The fi­nal step is the gazetting the drug with­in six months of ac­cep­tance.

The min­istry said from 2021 to date, over 1,300 drugs were sub­mit­ted and reg­is­tered and the ma­jor­i­ty were gazetted with­in the time­frame. It not­ed that drugs which did not have mar­ket­ing au­tho­ri­sa­tion by a strin­gent reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty, such as the Unit­ed States Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Unit­ed King­dom’s Med­i­cines and Health­care prod­ucts Reg­u­la­to­ry Agency or Health Cana­da, may re­quire ex­ten­sive tech­ni­cal re­view.