Pharmacy services during COVID-19 pandemic: experience from a tertiary care teaching hospital in Pakistan
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COMMENTARY
Pharmacy services during COVID‑19 pandemic: experience from a tertiary care teaching hospital in Pakistan Kashif Hussain* , Gul Ambreen, Mehreen Muzammil, Syed Shamim Raza and Umer Ali
Abstract The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is rapidly spreading across the world. Pharmacy services play a vital role in public health in preventing and containing the COVID-19 pandemic. All over the world, especially in the developed countries pharmacists have responded smartly and speedily for public health, such as establishing professional protective and service guidance for pharmacy staff and services, creating and updating drug formularies, addressing the issues of drug shortages, providing public education for prevention and management of infection, contributing in drug evaluation and clinical trials. In this commentary, we review the exclusive demands from pharmacy services in Pakistan during coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and sharing the responses of our hospital pharmacy to these demands and needs with the international pharmacy community, especially of the low and middle-income countries like Pakistan. Keywords: Hospital pharmacy services, COVID-19, Pharmacist, Pharmaceutical care Background After the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) in China in December 2019, it spread all over the world. Novel COVID-19 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. The SARS-CoV-2 is different from human SARS CoV and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) CoV with respect to genetic characteristics [2]. Fever, shortness of breath, cough, breathing difficulties, and respiratory symptoms are the common signs of this infection. Pneumonia, severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, organ failure, and death are possible complications [1]. This dangerously infectious virus spreads rapidly through human-to-human transmission. The first case reported on 26 February 2020, in Pakistan. As of 19 July, there are 263,496 confirmed cases and 5568 deaths with
*Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Pharmacy, Aga Khan University Hospital, Stadium Road (Main Pharmacy), P.O Box 3500, Karachi 74800, Pakistan
coronavirus disease in Pakistan (available on: https:// covid.gov.pk/stats/pakistan). In low middle-income countries, like Pakistan, medical services are under great pressure while responding to this pandemic. In a tertiary care hospital pharmacy, along with the other approaches and responses in pandemic crises such as supply of emergency medications according to the treatment guidelines and resolving drug shortage, it is also required to provide and continue the event-driven pharmaceutical care. After the rapid transmission and influx of COVID-19 patients in our hospital, pharmacy department has adopted the national guidelines and modified the activities to reduce humanto-human infections transmission. All the modifications in the pharmacy activities based on the theme to provide event-driven pharmaceutical care with the least interaction and medicat
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