Beware Of Winter Prescriptions
HAVE you ever wondered why at state hospitals you get few drugs but when you go to private doctors you get more drugs for the ailment?
As we go into winter there will be lots of flu, common colds, watery diarrhoea, which often do not require any drugs. The private sector works on dollars and cents, patients are customers who will get whatever they may want and what will bring them back to the same doctor who will claim more.
The pharmacist next-door to the doctor also smiles all the way to the bank over drugs he knows to be unnecessary. There is no longer the highest respect for ethics in the practice of medicine and dispensing of drugs; just money.
Often the state hospitals give the best drugs because they are not driven by gain or there are simply no drugs to abuse. So if one gets paracetamol/panado, very often that’s what all that is needed.
I have friends who are pharmacists who will tell you that they dispense to get more dollars as long patients are not harmed and if there is no benefit to them. The gullible medical aid societies pay for all sorts of dubious prescriptions.
Do they have manpower to counter-check the drugs they are paying for? Eventually the medical system collapses and everyone pays for it.
The practice of over-prescribing can also result from lack of knowledge by the doctor or from enticement by the pharmaceutical industry. Specialists often prescribe few drugs because they are more knowledgeable, this is easy to confirm.
Take a child with a common cold to a paediatrician and the same child to a general practitioner and compare drugs prescribed. Some of the practices border on criminal behaviour.
As we go into winter take care not to be made to abuse antibiotics by your doctor, because eventually your child develops drug resistance. Cough remedies are the other drugs that are going to be abused.
People should ask for reasons why certain drugs are prescribed by their doctors and ask what the doctor thinks is causing the illness.
People should also consult the internet on dugs they are using; at most avoid poly-pharmacy. I encourage people to take care of themselves and avoid being duped by commercial medicine.
Medical people are also encouraged to think beyond cash but the best interests of the patients and protect children from their demanding parents.
Authorities should investigate unholy pharmacist-doctor alliances, like pharmacists providing premises for doctors to operate from in exchange for cashing on prescriptions.
Concerned doctor
By email