Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta

Abstract

Role of Pharmacists in Health Based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO): Prospects and Future Directions

Mohamed Azmi Hassali, Omar Thanoon Dawood, Saleh Karamah AL-Tamimi and Fahad Saleem

In this era of globalization, there are many non-government organizations (NGO) that grow in the community. Nowadays, NGOs are becoming the medium for the community to voice out or be the one who lend their hand to help the community around them. In the health care profession, NGOs play an important role to help the people in the community to have a better health in the future. In order to move the state of health of the people in the community, NGOs should acknowledge the role of the pharmacist in their organizations. However, contribution of pharmacists in NGOs is essential because inappropriate assistance or incorrect assistance can lead to death of the consumers. In fact, pharmacists as experts in medicines, they will play important role in distribution the medications and educating the medicines consumers within NGOs. Pharmacists could help in relief efforts and they also help in humanitarian aid. Besides that, they could help in the equality in social and social justice for people in need. Although all these people in the NGOs are well educated but somehow, their knowledge alone does not suffice in helping the community towards a better health. There are still some NGOs that tend to ignore the role of the pharmacist in their organization. As they tend to ignore the existence of the pharmacist, the drug that they had distributed to the community will have higher chance of producing an adverse effect towards the consumer. In this essay, the roles of pharmacist in many sectors of the NGOs will be discussed further to open the eyes of the people in the NGOs about how important and useful pharmacists could be in their organization.