The World Is A Big Place

• By: ROLLASON, Peter (FIP Military and Emergency Pharmacy Section, Zimbabwe)
• Co-author(s): Mr Peter Rollason (MEPS, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe)
  
• Abstract:

  Introduction:
  The provisions of pharmaceutical services must be universal and not just emphasised to populations in affluent or at least in more viable countries. Healthcare providers, including pharmacists, should be looking at the adequate and successful provision of pharmaceutical care in every corner of the globe.
  Method:
  The range of provisions of pharmaceutical services activity should consider supplies and advice in remote, rural and poverty-stricken areas, where both infectious and non-communicable diseases are rampant, where water and electricity supplies are inadequate, where disasters occur, and where disasters continue. Information dealing with such diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, cholera, typhoid, ebola, filariasis and many such others should be much wider known and applied. People, not necessarily professors, who live and work in these areas are the ones to lecture and even demonstrate their experiences, successes and failures. Supplies of modern pharmaceuticals are frequently at hazard in these areas because of remoteness, poor infrastructure and climate problems.
  Results:
  "Pharmacy" is practiced by so many people. They are n’gangas, witch doctors, fortune tellers, bone throwers, herbalists, vendors, and they all trade in medicines and folk law. A large portion of the drugs we use today still have their origin in the “bush” and we need to know about them. What about artemesin used for malaria treatment five thousand years ago?
  Conclusion:
  Pharmacists must expand the definition of “Pharmacy” to be all embracing and look forward to serving the whole world. A lot of research is needed.