Most drugs to buy drugs to listen to shopping guide

1, the number of pharmacies licensed pharmacists, a serious shortage of quality, nine adults to buy medicine to listen to drug store shopping guide 70-year-old residents of Henan Zhengzhou Aunt Lee, after eating the hospital with hypoglycemic agents, went to a nearby pharmacy to buy a "hypoglycemic agent." However, selling Aunt Lee is not a hypoglycemic agent, but a similar package of antihypertensive drugs. After taking medicine, Auntie was flustered and dizzy. She was rushed to the hospital by her family and was diagnosed with hypotension.

There are quite a few people like Li Auntin who bought medicines with experience. Recently, the China Association for Science and Technology has conducted surveys on 234 urban and rural residents in 27 provinces and regions across the country, and has collected 4,202 valid questionnaires. The survey found that residents in both urban and rural areas in China are taking drugs more freely. More than 80% of them take self-medication. More than 40% of the children are self-administered when they fall ill, 40% of the elderly have experienced drug errors, and counterfeit drugs are spreading in rural areas.

According to the survey, 86.7% of respondents had had self-medication experience, and 36% had made mistakes in self-medication. Of these, 25.5% of the respondents stated that they had delayed treatment.

90% of people go to pharmacies to buy drugs to listen to shopping guide. 53.1% of respondents preferred to go to pharmacies to purchase drugs when they became ill. 93.6% of respondents would consult shopping guides before purchasing drugs, and 41.6% would purchase guide recommended drugs as an alternative. However, the reporter found that most pharmacy shopping guides do not qualify as licensed pharmacists. The recommended drugs are often premium drugs such as expensive drugs and new drugs.

Li Axiong, a resident of Chaoyang District, Beijing, went to the pharmacy to buy a bone paste because of a leg pain. The pharmacy shopping guide at the district recommended her to apply a patch of plaster. As a result, Auntie Li used it and couldn’t close it. Under the introduction of shopping guides, Auntie Lee also bought a kind of aerosol medicine that promotes blood circulation. It cost 57 yuan, which is more than double the amount of a similar brand of drugs. After using it, he did not think that shopping guides were so good. Aunt Lee felt that he had spent money. The pharmacy shopping guide told reporters that her salary had not been issued last month because the workload was not completed.

In the course of taking medicine, 69.7% of the people had the behavior of arbitrarily increasing or decreasing the course of treatment, or changed their own drugs. Ms. Jiang from Xinjiang, initially taking a hypoglycemic agent according to doctor's orders, later felt that the effect was too slow. He changed the other two hypoglycemic agents and did not expect to cause hypoglycemia and fainted.

In children's drug use, blind administration and abuse of antibiotics are more common. According to surveys, nearly 30% of parents decide to give their children reduced doses of adult drugs or antibiotics after the child becomes ill, and sometimes use multiple combinations of drugs. The abuse of antibiotics by children in hospitals is even more serious. According to a survey conducted by the Beijing Children's Hospital in recent years, more than 95% of children with respiratory infections use antibiotics to varying degrees, and more than one-third of them are treated with intravenous antibiotics, and the types, levels, and prices of antibiotics are increasingly high. When antibiotics are used improperly, it is likely to cause irreparable lifelong injuries to children.

For various unsafe drug use activities, the China Association for Science and Technology survey found that residents use drugs mainly based on experience, fear of trouble, and lack of medical knowledge, more than 40% of people think they lack the knowledge of safe drug use, 69% of people do not understand the drug instructions . As the main place for people to purchase drugs, pharmacies currently have 360,000 stores. Some pharmacies, especially single stores and smaller chain pharmacies, use unfair business practices to make profits. The number of licensed pharmacists is less than 200,000, and most of them work in hospitals. The number of licensed pharmacists in pharmacies is seriously inadequate, and it is impossible to recommend drugs to buyers in a reasonable and standard manner.

2. There is a lack of medical knowledge among farmers, and unsafe drug use is more common. The awareness of safe drug use is significantly lower than that of urban areas. In rural areas, counterfeit medicine, illegal medical practice, unlawful drug trafficking, and illegal medical advertisements are common in some rural health clinics in Huoqiu County, Anhui Province. Once a child has a cold, fever, diarrhea and other symptoms, doctors basically use “three prime one soup”. , namely antibiotics, hormones, vitamins, glucose injections. The investigators found that regardless of the disease, the farmers love to go to individual clinics, and the most common way to use these small clinics is to use "three-in-one soup."

In places where migrant workers gather, small and inexpensive clinics are also places where migrant workers most often visit. According to an investigation by a group of migrant workers gathered in Weitang Town, Jiangsu Province, the research group of the China Association for Science and Technology found that migrant workers usually go to informal informal clinics instead of going to local regular medical institutions. Since then, the majority has been resolved privately between doctors and patients.

The population in rural areas in China exceeds 800 million people, among which there are a large number of migrant workers who have flown to the cities, reaching more than 200 million. Due to the backward medical conditions in rural areas and the lack of medical knowledge among farmers, unsafe drug use behavior is more common, and the awareness of safe drug use is significantly lower than that of urban areas. In addition, counterfeit drugs, illegal medical practices, unscrupulous drug sales, and illegal medical advertisements are widespread in rural areas.

According to the survey, 33.9% of the farmers surveyed did not know that the drugs had prescription or non-prescription drugs. 70% said that they could not insist on taking medicines according to the course of treatment, and 65% of the drugs were easily affected by the surrounding people. Research groups in rural areas in Xinjiang, Hebei, Anhui, and Jilin have found that the problem of difficulty in buying drugs in rural areas is still more serious. In many poor areas, an average of more than 4,000 talents have a pharmaceutical sales point. The distribution of pharmaceutical retail outlets in rural areas, the small size of pharmacies, the small number of sales, and the high cost of logistics have resulted in rural medicine prices generally higher than those in cities. Through in-depth interviews, the research team found that more than 30% of the interviewed farmers had bought counterfeit and inferior medicines, and over 50% of the respondents who had visited the cities considered that the efficacy of medicines sold in rural areas was not good.

According to Mr. Zhao from the practice of rural medicine in Anhui Province, every three or five days, drug dealers drove cars to clinics and pharmacies to sell medicines, including many expired medicines or counterfeit medicines made from cornmeal. These illegal medicine vendors bluntly stated that medicines are cheap. Absolutely not eating bad people.

The proliferation of counterfeit drugs and expired drugs is related to the lack of pharmaceutical companies’ dedication to the shortage of drugs in the rural market and to the weak supervision in rural areas. Illegal operators or underground wholesalers took the opportunity to enter the rural drug market. Village clinics, individual clinics, and retail pharmacies sell outdated drugs bought from cities and counterfeit drugs produced by criminals.

In addition, rural illegal medical advertisements are very rampant. The survey found that almost all county-level TV stations broadcast unlawful medical advertisements on a daily basis, and broadcast time accounts for 1/3 of the total broadcast time of television stations, which seriously misleads farmers who do not have discriminatory abilities to use drugs.

3. Experts recommend extensive popularization of medical knowledge, encouraging retail chain enterprises to enter the rural market, and establishing a joint supervision mechanism for drug administration, health, public security, and industry and commerce. The task force believes that there is a lack of knowledge about scientific drug use and it is vulnerable to misleading advertisements and shopping guides. The system is not perfect and directly affects the safe drug use behavior of urban and rural residents.

The survey found that both urban and rural residents in China generally believe that there is a lack of effective guidance for the use of drugs. 62.4% of the respondents chose to ask for professional medical personnel when obtaining medication information, but 26.9% said that they did not communicate well with doctors, and doctors only focused on prescribing medications and were unwilling to answer patients' questions. Nearly 30% of patients describe doctors as "black heart angels" with "red packets, random drugs, arbitrary charges." However, due to the over-specialty of the drug instruction manual that should have a guiding role, 69% of the respondents said they couldn't read it completely, and 24.4% said that they had misled the drug because of misunderstanding of the instructions.

In an interview with the Second People’s Hospital of Chengdu, Sichuan, the reporter discovered that the outpatient hall had set up a medication counseling desk. Every day, a full-time practising pharmacist provided residents with free medication advice and recorded it for analysis to better guide medication. The hospital did not add too much to this cost, and invested about 100,000 yuan per year. However, in other hospitals across the country, the reporter found that this type of service did not carry out much, and there was no authoritative website for residents to consult for free.

The Task Force recommends that the government provide institutional, organizational, and personnel protection for the widespread implementation of medical science knowledge. Integrate medical science knowledge into quality education teaching materials; divest some institutions and personnel from medical institutions and medical education institutions, foster a group of independent non-profit organizations specializing in medical science and public consultation, and support medical experts to give lectures on medical knowledge at regular intervals. The establishment of authoritative and trustable medical knowledge website provides search queries and online medical consultation services.

Regarding children's abuse of antibiotics, the task group recommended increasing support for children's medical institutions, raising the salaries of pediatric healthcare workers, and introducing policies to support the development and production of children's special drugs. Further improve the children's drug administration related systems, carry out regular spot checks, and gradually realize the networking of electronic prescriptions. The current control measures for antibiotics in large hospitals can be gradually extended to community and rural hospitals.

Regarding the abuse of rural “three-in-one soup”, counterfeit medicines, and expired drugs, the research team suggested that the level of diagnosis and treatment at the primary medical institutions should be improved to guide the people to attend the primary medical institutions and to encourage medical personnel to guide the patients. Gradually extend medical insurance to the supervision of the medical services of medical personnel. Strengthen the continuing education of rural medical personnel. Encourage retail chain enterprises to enter the rural market. At the same time, it strengthened cooperation among departments, established a joint supervision mechanism of drug administration, health, public security, and industry and commerce departments, increased sampling inspection efforts, eliminated the entry of counterfeit and inferior drugs into rural markets, cracked down on false advertising campaigns targeting farmers, and clarified the market environment of rural medicine.