11:57 p.m
Thursday 02 February 2023
Books – Ahmed Gomaa:
The incident of the death of a child after receiving an antibiotic injection in a pharmacy in Assiut governorate revived the controversy over giving injections inside pharmacies, weeks after the death of two girls in Alexandria after they were given an antibiotic injection in a pharmacy as well.
The Public Prosecution had ordered a pharmacy worker to be imprisoned for 4 days pending investigations. For accusing him of injecting a child with antibiotics inside a pharmacy in Assiut, which led to his death.
The Public Prosecution office considered that the incident constituted a felony of intentional wounding leading to death, in addition to a misdemeanor accusing him of practicing the profession of human medicine in violation of the provisions of the law, and of working in a pharmacy without a license.
The father of the deceased child, Muhammad, revealed that his son was feeling pain due to tonsillitis, which prompted him to accompany his older brother and go to a nearby pharmacy, as is customary in the popular areas of Egypt to obtain an anti-inflammatory injection, and he was injected with an antibiotic, but after his return, the father noticed a swelling of his body. His son, to go to the hospital and be placed in the intensive care room, before he died later.
For his part, Dr. Mohamed El-Sheikh, a member of the Senate and president of the Cairo Pharmacists Syndicate, said that the instructions of the Pharmacists Syndicate are still in effect to prevent giving injections in pharmacies until legislation is issued to protect them in such cases.
And he stressed that the pharmacy is not the place where it is allowed to give injections to patients, but rather they go to the hospital as it is the medical facility equipped and licensed to deal with patients in these cases, and all pharmacists in the different governorates must follow the official instructions, so that they are not subjected to any action against them.
health decision
And last December, following a pharmacist’s imprisonment crisis in Alexandria, Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Health and Population, issued a ministerial decision regulating the process of allowing qualified pharmacists to administer medicine through intramuscular or subcutaneous injections, after reviewing the previously stipulated controls, in a way that guarantees the rights of pharmacists and facilitates their The patients.
The ministerial decision included:
* Do not give injections to patients unless there is a prescription from the attending physician that requires injecting the patient with the required medication
* The pharmacist’s passing of training courses through the Ministry of Health or the bodies specified by the Ministry
* Ensure the availability of anti-allergic drugs
* Giving patients only intramuscular and subcutaneous injections only.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Health began organizing advanced training courses for members of the medical team in all governorates of the Republic, and granting them the necessary certificates and licenses to ensure patient safety.
