As a medical doctor, I, myself have met different pharmaceutical representatives of different companies who market their products. The doctors write the names of brands of medicines and the laymen and naive patients tend to run after the pharmacies to find and buy ‘only’ the brand named specific company’s drugs. Even if the same chemical or drug is available at the pharmacy stores but the patients take the doctor’s written prescription as a thing that is absolutely true and they tend to only buy the specific company’s medicine as prescribed.

The point is that in some developed western countries, the doctors like to write a drug mostly by its chemical name. It has to be related to the medical ethics where a medical doctor is diagnosing patients and is most concerned with the chemical when it comes to prescribing the medicines. In Pakistan, doctors get to choose or pick the name of a company to write the drugs for the patients, while the western doctors love to write drugs by their chemical names mostly. When the patient goes to the pharmacy store, the pharmacist reads the generic name of the drug and places the right tablets in a bottle with a paper sticking on it detailing the chemical name and also the doses of the drug.

(To be continued tomorrow)

Dr Batool HassanB.Sc., BS (US), MBBS, PGD HCM, CHQP, RMP Email drbatoolhassan@yahoo.com

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