Callous methods by pharmacists

As reported in yesterday’s Newsday, sick-out action taken by pharmacists at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex has resulted in the supply of Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) formula to be reduced from eight bags a day to one per week. This formula assists the growth rate of premature babies and so helps them to become healthy.

In July, the media discovered that two pharmacists assigned to the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital had stopped mixing the formula because the extra monies for this duty had not been paid for five months. That delay was apparently the result of deliberate bureaucratic stonewalling by accounts clerks at the North West Regional Health Authority, (NWRHA) who were angry at not being put on permanent status. As a result, the pharmacists decided to risk the health of the babies.

As is typical of our sorry system, no one has been disciplined for this lapse, nor appears likely to be. And, it now turns out, the pharmacists themselves clearly don’t think that they did anything wrong, since they are now repeating the same action as part of their industrial protests. But perhaps we should not be so surprised, since the NWRHA pharmacists actually defended the two guilty individuals, claiming that their withholding of services was to highlight the dangerous working conditions under which the TPN formula was made and that no babies had, in fact, been put at risk since TPN was supplied to those in critical condition.

Both these excuses are inexcusable. If working conditions are unsatisfactory, there are less callous methods of bringing such deficiencies to official attention — including contacting the media. As for not placing the babies at risk, we would have thought that this is a medical judgment that pharmacists are not qualified to make.

Indeed, it is mind-boggling that the pharmacists can actually attempt to defend actions which may affect the entire future of these babies. Premature babies are subject to all sorts of complications, and it is only modern technology which allows them to survive at all. But the greatest risk factor is their low birthweight, which the TPN formula helps offset by assisting growth. The pharmacists may have salved their consciences by ensuring that enough TPN was supplied to those babies classified as critical. But all that means is that the pharmacists may have helped to maim, instead of murder.

Many studies have shown a definite link between low birthweight and a host of physical diseases in later life. Low birthweight has also been implicated in poor academic performance. It is not that such outcomes are inevitable, but being born premature does increase the risk factors. So what these pharmacists may have done, and are doing now, is disadvantaging these children in their first few months of life.

We expect Health Minister John Rahael has been paying close attention to these developments. He has, we know, been bending over backwards to meet the demands of the various health care professionals under his watch. But it seems that it is time for him to straighten up, and straighten these persons out.