And, the modestly good news is that if any of those doctors need the anti-psychotic drug Resperidol - it is now available. The medication, which is heavily relied upon by persons with schizophrenia and bi-polar disease had become scare to unavailable at public health clinics in March and April - seriously affecting those persons who rely on a daily dosage. Today, Allen told us it is now available at the health centers:..
Dr. Peter Allen, CEO, Ministry of Health
"There were previous categories of drugs that use to be used in the past, but some of them have some side effects. And so we've been fortunate in being able to increase our budget for medical supplies and that has allowed us to procure some of the more modern drugs which are perhaps more affective and have less side effects. Respiredol is one of those and we were having a problem with the supply around about the end of March and the beginning of April, but that has been resolved. Respiredol is available and will continue to be available at all clinics. We procure them under tender, so there's a tender where different agencies bid. Some of these drugs are control drugs so they are not freely available at every pharmacy or supplier and you will need to have the proper permits and licenses."
"That was actually one of the challenges for us even when we're having problems with the supply, because we couldn't simply go over to for example, Mexico, buy some and bring it over. Because they are controlled and controlled not just by national legislation but by international legislation. So what happens for us is that at the joined course of every year, we ask our pharmacists around the country, 'what has been the historic usage rate'. So approximately, how much each and every other medical supplies have they used. Then we ask them based on the patient flow, to predict what will be the usage rate for the following year. of course this isn't an exact science, but we are required to predict a number so that, that is the number that people are going to bid for when they tender for medical supplies and we do this for each of those. Now, whoever is the contractor who wins the contract, they are required to procure, store and distribute the supplies to the appropriate clinics or hospitals around the country."
"Within our mental health program, we used to have just one physiatrist, Doctor Claudina Cayetano. But now we are fortunate to have multiple physiatrists, but of course one of the challenges with that was the usage rate of some of our medications increased. So that the predicted usage rate was actually not as accurate as we would have wished. We also have a network of psychiatric nurse practitioners working in clinics around the country because we want to make sure that we offer mental health services at the community level. I think one of the biggest challenges with mental health is the stigma that's attached to it, people don't like to talk about mental illness. Although in fact most of us will experience some category of mental illness during our lives. There's still that stigma where you may feel comfortable saying to your neighbour that you are going to see the doctor because your pressure is high. But you may not feel comfortable saying to your same neighbour that you're going to see the doctor because your bipolar depression isn't being controlled properly. It's one of those things that an intrinsic discrimination occurs. So it's something that we try to be very careful with. We also try through the mental health association and through the consumer groups to try to engage with the patients and the clients themselves. Because of course mental health, like any other chronic disease, when it's controlled, allows our clients to be perfectly normal members of society and go on with their lives as possible."
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