THE EDITOR, Sir:

WHEN THE Bruce Golding-led administration came into office, it took the official decision to abolish all hospital user fees, which was a positive move from my perspective. However, what is really disconcerting is the fact that, on many occasions, patients who visit the respective hospitals across the country are having great difficulty accessing the drugs prescribed by the doctors who treated them at the public hospitals. This is most unfortunate, to say the least.

The pharmacies at the public hospitals just do not have many of the drugs that have been prescribed by the doctors who work at these medical institutions. Hence, the patients are being forced to turn to private pharmacies on the outside and have to be paying for those prescribed drugs that are on the given prescriptions from the public hospitals, oftentimes costing huge amounts of money each month.

Why are those pharmacies at the public hospitals not stocking those drugs that are being prescribed by those doctors who work at those hospitals? The minister of health, Ruddy Spencer, must take immediate steps to ensure that all the public Type 1 and Type 2 hospitals across the country have the required drugs and medications that patients need when they attend those public medical institutions.

A disgrace

It is disgraceful, the inefficient manner in which many of those public hospital pharmacies are being operated, including the pharmacy that is based at the Cornwall Regional Hospital, to which I recently went and received rather poor and grossly unprofessional customer service. It is imperative that a publicly operated hospital pharmacy is made to operate in an efficient manner and respecting the rights of the patients who attend that facility to fill prescriptions.

I have heard reported in the media, comments to the effect that the health minister is considering privatising the pharmacies that are based within the public hospitals throughout the country. Minister Spencer, scrap that thought and proposed policy now. Those hospital pharmacies should continue to be funded and operated by the Government.

I am, etc.,

RICHARD L. TOMLINSON

drtomlinson22@hotmail.com

Montego Bay

St James