Hyderabad 10:34 am: It was the day I entered my graduation, sometime in the late November of 2005. I was amused, confused, nervous, curious... etc. as everybody do. The very first day of the college begins with an orientation programme as in convention. However the first class of the profession is not quite obvious as of any other profession (I am not talking about introduction stuff) if you are the pharmacist certainly you know this weirdness. The profession begins with a question (rather than motivation!) that whether you entered this profession by chance or by choice? ( well to join a pharmacy school one has to register and attend counseling in the order of their merit in common entrance. Then where is the question of chance?)
Well this is not the only thing perhaps just an exemplification of the uncertainty of the profession. The second common thing one could come across during their school is that pharmacy teachers often times says "if you were asked by your neighbors in your village what were you doing? then if you reply am pursuing B. Pharm, they immediately proclaim what B. Com which year?". This is certainly changed to some extent due to media in recent past when compared to 90's however the uncertainty still remains.
To know the real cause of this uncertainty let me tell you the very brief history of pharmacy profession. Firstly, the ancient and traditional method of medicine of our country was Ayurveda and Sidha where the vaidya was the sole hero. However the colonial expansion of britishers slowly suppressed the traditional medicine, at the same time the apothecary and modern medicine gained due consideration. The first pharmacy school was architected by Prof.M.L. Schroff by introducing pharmaceutical chemistry in B.Sc level at B.H.U which later evolved into a professional B. Pharm degree. Soon after India got independence we constituted "Pharmacy Act 1948" which laid down ER's, which seemed to be justified since in the earlier periods of independence India is in urgent need of skilled persons.
Since then the pharmacy act has not been amended except in recent past where Pharm. D courses has been included. Recently, an outstanding scientist stated that we do not have qualified pharmacists, which is the prime cause of mediocre standards of health care system. I do not agree with him it is quite ironical! every year thousands of graduates (B. Pharm) are graduating (which might be very less compared to our population) yet they fail to be assimilated into the system. Since the problem is with the system and may be to some extent with the students. B. Pharm graduates has to compete with Diploma and M.Sc (Chemistry) graduates, most of the industrial positions are occupied by chemistry graduates and the pharmacy are occupied by Diploma graduates. The other important perspective is that most of the drugs manufactured in India are 'Generic drugs', the considerable amount of research has been done to get process patents, this is the probable reason for mediocre development of hospital and clinical pharmacists. I don't undermine the importance of chemist perhaps their lack of knowledge in other aspects of pharmaceutical sciences has limited their research, in other words the outstanding scientists failed to produce outstanding results.
From the year 2005 there is only product patent no process patents, this has posed challenge to pharmaceutical industry. We need a considerable amount of research to develop innovative drugs as there are emerging new diseases. We certainly need reforms especially amending pharmacy act (raising minimum qualification to register as pharmacist to B Pharm) , strict regulation of pharmaceutical industries and pharmacies. Finally, I would like to say we do have qualified pharmacists, what we don't have is a qualified system to utilize their service.
