As part of the pharmacy week celebrations this year, the Kerala state branch of the Federation of Indian Pharmacists Organizations (FIPO), along with Pharmaceutical Society of Kerala, will organize a one-week public awareness programme about medication use in 1,000 centres across the state, in the third week of November.
Under the initiative of FIPO district committees, the centres will be identified in consultation with local administration bodies, school PTAs and Kudumbashree units to conduct the awareness programme. For the purpose, 62 resource persons will be trained from across all districts, said KC Ajith Kumar, secretary of FIPO Kerala. The trainers will be educated on how to perform in the awareness classes and what would be the content of their classes. A trainers’ training programme is scheduled to be conducted in two places next week. Help of NGOs, local bodies, youth associations, and women’s groups will be sought to find out the centres and bring people to the classes. Regarding the awareness programme, FIPO has designed a syllabus based on feedback received from patients, pharmacists and doctors. The syllabus will contain lessons about medicines, their side-effects, dosages, combination drugs, how to handle a drug, how to keep them at home, how to destroy the empty strips, understanding of antimicrobial resistance, antibiotics, antibiotic resistance and antibiotic use, in addition to classification of medicines such as generics, branded generics and branded products. The association plans to hold the general classes in one thousand centres all over Kerala. A minimum of 80 classes will be held in each district. Ajith Kumar said the programme will be kicked off on November 20 at Kozhikodu MNVG Adiyodi building. Simultaneously programmes will be started in the selected centres in all the districts. They plan to complete the programme on 26th evening. He said FIPO has been engaging in public awareness programmes on medication use for the last several years, but they were all conducted on each association’s request. But considering the acceptance of the programme, the association itself has decided to hold it in different places during the pharmacy week celebration period. Participation of pharmacists from community pharmacies, hospital pharmacies and other pharmacy professionals will be ensured. However, it will not be like an academic class type. It will be like a general public awareness programme, just to sensitize the public about medication use and its side-effects. Doctors who are also well-versed in pharmacology will also be invited as resource persons, said Ajith Kumar who was previously the president of the Kerala Pharmacy Council. B Rajan, vice-chairman of FIPO and former president of Kerala State Pharmacy Council in 2015, said in the first phase of the awareness programme, priority is given for higher secondary school students, so most of the centres will be selected from HSSs in each area. He said the trainers’ training programme in Thiruvananthapuram district will be held next week and he will also be a resource person. In the capital district, Rajan is targeting 100 school-centres for the awareness class. He pointed out that the pharmacy profession is also part of the medical profession and knowledge about drugs and their use is necessary for the upcoming generation to address various issues like AMR. General awareness on medicines has to be made part of school curriculum to make the public more health conscious. Rajan said through school children the awareness on medication use can be spread among all the members of the family, and thus to the society.
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