'Patient care and pharmacy practice have indeed lagged behind'

Unlike the previous Indian Pharmaceutical Congresses (IPC), the 59th IPC at Varanasi will strongly talk about the issues like pharmacy practices and patient care. Dr H P Tipnis, President, 59th IPC, analyses more in an exclusive interview with Sachin Jagdale

Why do patient care and pharmacy practices have a longer gestation period, when on the other hand pharma industry is climbing new heights?

Patient care and pharmacy practice have indeed lagged behind because of the attitude of our retail drug store owners and pharmacists. The medicines were treated as a commodity and the business was based on trading. Only recently this attitude is changing.

What needs to be done in order to boost these two sectors (patient care and pharmacy practices)?

There has to be some education provided to the chemists and druggists. The new generation is receptive to this. A welcome effort is being made by Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council to run refresher courses on Saturdays and Sundays and it is getting a very good response.

In what way can IPC at Varanasi give momentum to the development of the above mentioned sectors?

For the first time at Varanasi this issue is brought to the forefront. So far, the issues at IPC were only pharma industry oriented and were projecting only their interest. The highlighting of the issue will certainly give it a momentum.

What is the rationale behind choosing the current theme of IPC?

The current theme, "Pharma Vision 2020—product, patient and pratice", is a part of the Pharma Vision 2020 declaration that we had at Chennai in 2003, at the hands of the then President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Since then, IPCA is taking parts of that 10 point declaration in every congress. Last year in Mumbai we concentrated on "roles, resources and responsibilites" of pharamacists in India. This year we are going a step further and focusing on "products, patient and practices".

The 59th IPC is quite focused on pharmacy education. Why so?

Naturally this is the 75th year of the first pharmacy college of India, which was founded at BHU, Varanasi. From here, the pharmacy education in India started, spread and proliferated. Today we have over 400 pharmacy colleges offering degrees and diplomas in pharmacy.

Don't you think pharmacy education in India needs to be revamped as the pharma industry is changing rapidly with each passing day?

Yes indeed, but let me say that whatever pharmacy education that we offered was industry oriented, and it did indeed serve the needs of pharma industry. The growth of this industry that you see today is brought by the hard work of pharmacy graduates who slogged in their factories. If the education would not have been good, the industry would not have progressed. Albeit, the pharmacy graduates learned a lot on the job, but even then their learning was based on the sound foundation of industrial pharmacy course that they underwent.

What kind of changes you would suggest in the current format of pharmacy education?

The changes that are needed are at the specialised levels of pharmacy education. There have to be courses in biotechnology that can be applied to the making of biotech drugs, bio informaties as applied to drug discovery programmes, regulatory affairs courses for penetration in regulated markets, clinical trials courses for CRO work in India etc. But the base for all this has to be an industrial pharmacy oriented B Pharm course. On the other side there should be a clinical pharmacy oriented course which will be patient and practice oriented. There should be a choice given to the next generation to go either for industry (product) oriented course or clinical (patient) oriented course.

What challenges do you face presiding over the 59th IPC?

Challenges for the President of any IPC are always to take the decisions that we take at the Congress to the Government bodies, to regulatory bodies and even to our own professional organisations to act.

Is Varanasi the right location to arrange such a grand event? If yes, please justify.

Yes indeed. The last Congress that was held in Varanasi was in 1982. After nearly 25 long years, Varanasi is getting the honour of hosting the Congress. It is also the 75th year of the foundation of the first pharmacy college in India. So it really deserves this honour.

sachin.jagdale@expressindia.com