Rational Drug Usage

GREETINGS……….
My fellow readers, today my post will be about Rational Drug Usage and Management, or simply Evidence-based Pharmacy, in focus primarily of Indonesia.
As we all know, many countries all over the world especially the developing nations have developed national drug policies, a concept that has been actively promoted by the WHO. For an instance, Indonesia had drawn up its own National Drug Policy in 1983 which had the following objectives:
1. To ensure the availability of drugs according to the needs of the population.
2. To improve the distribution of drugs in order to make them accessible to the whole population.
3. To ensure efficacy, safety quality and validity of marketed drugs and to promote proper, rational and efficient use.
4. To protect the public from misuse and abuse.
5. To develop the national pharmaceutical potential towards the achievements of self-reliance in drugs and in support of national economic growth.
In order to achieve this entire objective in Indonesia, a lot of changes had to be made and implemented. The changes are as follows:
1. A national list of essential drugs was established and implemented in all public sector institutions. The list is revised periodically.
2. A ministerial decree in 1989 required that drugs in public sector institutions be prescribed generically and that pharmacy and therapeutics committees be established in all hospitals.
3. District hospitals and health centers have to procure their drugs based on the essential drugs list.
4. Most drugs are supplied by three government-owned companies.
5. Training modules have been developed for drug management and rational drug use and these have been rolled out to relevant personnel.
6. The central drug laboratory and provincial quality control laboratories have been strengthened.
7. A major teaching hospital has developed a program on rational drug use, developing a hospital formulary, guidelines for rational diagnosis and treatment guidelines for the rational use of antibiotics.
8. Generic drugs have been available at affordable costs to low-income groups.

So that is all the basic history of drug management policy in Indonesia. Hereby I attached the logistics cycle used in order to make the management policy more realistic and applicable.
Thank You for tuning in. See you all in my next post.