Know Your Medicine

Do u know your medicine?

As a consumer, we seldom realise what are our rights and responsibilities in buying our medicines. Understand more of our rights can actually help us make a better decision and we can get a better health outcome.

Recently, Msia government set up a health campaign called "Know Your Medicine"

It is a health campaign jointly organised by :
1) Ministry of Health (MOH)
2) Federation of Malaysian Consumer Association (FOMCA).

The campaign was just launch yesterday 29june2007 by the minister of health at melaka

This campaign aims are :
a) to let the public know and understand their medicines,
c) to educate them to use medicines rationally
d) to inform their right to information on medicines.

In conjunction with this campaign, they set up a website to let the public access.
http://www.knowyourmedicine.gov.my/

I find this website quite useful and interesting. As a pharmacist, educating consumer on rational/proper use of medication important and this webstite help to increase the awareness of the consumer which will in turn cause the pharmacists' job to be more easy.

However, when there is an increase in awareness, the consumer will tend to ask more questions. As a result, pharmacists must also equip themselves with the latest information to make sure that they fulfill the increase demand of the patients.

I think this time the government had done a good job by launching this campaign. Hope it can successfully sent the correct message to the public and the campaign also should not be just "3 minutes work" and each relevant sectors must also help in making the campaign a success.

P/S: This is also a good website: http://www.myhealth.gov.my