The newly opened Skin Pharmacy at City Square mall in Kitchener Road has been brought to attention due to its provision of products that are specially formulated to cater to individual customers? needs. What makes this pharmacy stand out from other existing pharmacies is that the pharmacists do not only dispense medication but are also involved in the blending and concoction of skin and hair care products specially tailored for individual customers.

The pharmacists are able to create an individualized formula for customers, from pharmacy stocks containing mostly ingredients that are not commercially available; including amino acids, essential oils and whitening agents. This formula is devised in accordance to individual customer?s skin type and needs, before mixing the product on the spot. Fragrance and colour can then be included to improve the presentation and appeal of the product. There are also machines available to perform skin analysis of the customers. In my opinion, these machines will definitely be of benefit especially to customers who are not fully aware of their skin types and conditions. Therefore these skin analyses can help to ascertain individual skin conditions; aiding in the identification of effective treatment methods to deal with existing skin problems.

The Skin Pharmacy is managed by a local husband-and-wife team who are both Australian-trained pharmacists and is believed to the first boutique pharmacy in Singapore. Besides offering custom-made products and its own skin and hair care line, it also functions as a regular pharmacy containing medicines for treatment of dermatological ailments such as fungal growth and hair loss.

Their main focus on establishing a boutique pharmacy was mainly driven by their knowledge that compounding work in a retail setting is not so common in Singapore, especially with technological advancements resulting in pharmacists taking on more patient-centered roles of solely recommending or dispensing medication instead of blending and making products. This is especially evident in retail pharmacies such as Guardian and Watsons; whereby pharmacists are mostly involved in dispensing over-the-counter medications.

Prices start from about $30 for a 230g tub of moisturizing cream which then ranges for customized products depending on the nature and amount of ingredients required by the customers. Service charges are also included as the pharmacists will provide professional advice on the compatibility and stability of the ingredients to ensure the best welfare of the customers.

Personally, I find that these personalized services are quite worthwhile especially since the effectiveness of skin-care or hair-care products may vary among individuals depending on their skin types. Therefore, by seeking professional pharmacist opinions, customers can feel more reassured rather than simply purchasing off-the-counter medications and products which may contain ingredients that may evoke allergic reactions among certain individuals.

Review by Chong Hui Ping (Year 1)

The holidays are here, but while we’re taking a well-deserved break let’s not forget that there’s still plenty of pharmacy-related issues out there in the world for us to think about.

Happy holidays everyone!
The 49th Media Resource Team

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Article on the Bayer HIV Tainted Drug Scandal

For centuries, clear and simple principles shaped the relationship between physicians and their patients: work for the good of the patient; do no harm; keep the patient’s medical information confidential. The medical profession’s respect for patient privacy is rooted in the foundation of medical practice, as evidenced by provisions included in the earliest versions of the Hippocratic Oath.

These principles can be seen between a physician-patient relationship, but what happens in the relationship between a pharmaceutical company and her patients? Should these companies be bound by their respective code of ethics?

Pharmaceutical company Bayer sold large amounts of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs in Asia and Latin America in the 1980s. However, the medicine sold carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS.

Hemophiliacs are people who are unable to stop bleeding or prevent bleeds from starting. The medicine, called Factor VIII concentrate, basically provides the crucial ingredient for clotting which hemophiliacs lack.

However, in the early years, the medicine used pools of plasma from 10,000 or more donors. Since there was still no screening test for AIDS, it carried a high risk of passing along the disease; even a tiny number of HIV-positive donors would contaminate an entire pool of plasma.

In response, Cutter Biological (division of Bayer) introduced a safer medicine in 1984 and sold it in the West. Yet for more than a year, the old medicine was sold overseas – an attempt to avoid being struck with large stocks of a product that was increasingly unmarketable in the West.

There were other reasons as to why the old medicine was still marketed: the company (Cutter) had several fixed-price contracts and believed the old version would be cheaper to produce. Later, when the whole incident was revealed, Cutter claimed that some patients believe that the older version worked better than the newer one.

Nearly 20 years later, the precise human toll of these marketing decisions is difficult, if not impossible, to document.

But in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs contracted HIV after using Cutter’s old medicine, records and interviews show. Many have since died. Cutter also continued to sell the older product after February 1984 in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina, records show.

Recently, a group of HIV-hemophiliac patients from Taiwan are appealing a US court ruling barring them from suing pharmaceutical giant Bayer. The group’s first appeal was in 2003.

Dr Sidney Wolfe, who as director of the Public Citizen Health Research Group has been investigating industry practices for 30 years, said “these are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen.”

This incident have led many to wonder about pharmaceutical companies and their aims:
- Are they out to heal us or just out to earn money?
- Should we place our full trust in the medications we take? Are they any safeguards we should take and how?

Although this incident questions the goals of pharmaceutical companies, there are companies which strives to help others in need. Take Merck for example. Being one of the first to develop the HIV medication, they are now ’selling’ their HIV medication at a very low cost to needy patients in Africa, where HIV infection rates are high.

As we have learnt in Pharmacy Practice I, resolving the goals of a commercial business and professional ethics of pharmacy is of utmost importance. As some of you are already aware, “Commerce with Conscience” is the direction some companies have taken. The most famous example would be The Body Shop, were founder Mrs Anita Roddick reconciled profits with her ideals of returning what she have gained to the society. The Merck example above is a prime example of a pharmaceutical giant providing social change.

Perhaps it is time for health-care related industries to change their goals.

Review by Chua Jia Ni  (Year 1)

Review on the Straits Time Article:
Tame doctors’ greed and protect patients (30 Sept 2009)

There has been much buzz on the newspapers recently about doctors who have been negligent in their prescriptions. Although stiff penalties have been imposed by the Health Ministry, there are still a good number of doctors who fall into the web of greed. These unethical acts pose threats not only to the reputation of the doctors, but also to the lives of their patients.

In the past five years, 23 doctors have been hauled before the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) and penalized for dispensing sleeping pills indiscriminately. Subutex drugs, meant for curbing heroin abuse, were also freely dispensed to patients?however the drugs ended up being abused.

Several people such as Madam Halimah Yacob (Jurong GRC) and Salma Khalik (Straits Times Health Correspondent) have suggested the separation of prescription from sale. Pharmacists, trained to check doctors? prescription, would help maintain patient safety by ensuring that the appropriate drugs are dispensed to the patients.

It has been agreed that it would be highly inconvenient for patients to go down to a pharmacy after consulting a doctor to get their medication, compared to the one-stop service patients are exposed to locally. However, this may not be applicable to drugs such as sleeping pills or obesity drugs. These drugs are not needed urgently by patients, but still can be easily abused if doctors are lax in prescribing them.
The Straits Time report also suggests that there could be an identifying of pharmacy-only drugs or the registering of patients who are prescribed such drugs, to prevent doctor-hopping.

The current dispensing system has been kept by the Health Ministry in order to ensure the convenience of patients. However, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan has suggested that doctors provide patients with a clearly written prescription, and then leave the patient to decide where to obtain his medication.

Another good way of preventing greed by doctors while keeping the current system of practice would be to enforce transparency in bills from private clinics that itemize the costs of consultation, tests and drugs.

Review by: Selina Lim & Belinda Tan (Year 1)

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What do you think? Discuss your views here.
Time to apply what we have learnt in PR1103!

Hey everyone,

The IPSF (International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation) newletters are out!

Please read on to be updated about what your pharmacy counterparts are doing worldwide. Newsletter #67 is on patient counseling related events while #68 is on Students Exchange Programme, of which our very own Patient Counseling Event is being featured in #67. If you’re interested in any of these events, this is a very good chance to know more about them!

Happy reading!

Warmest Regards,
Valerie Ng
Vice President
IPSF Contact Person
49th Executive Committee
NUS Pharmaceutical Society

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Click on the images to access the newsletters (:

Student Exchange Programme Edition

Professional Development Edition

As a PMC Year 1 Student, there have been many occasions when professors have questioned me [and my classmates] on why Pharmacy is a profession. Often, most of us avert our gaze from the professors, unsure about the answer. We don’t want to be called upon to give an answer – why?

Perhaps the seeming reluctance to answer that question is that we have problems defining what professionalism is. Personally, this uncertainty surely translates into a need for self-examination. In 4 years time, we will be graduating as pharmacists, but as professionals?

Instead to alluding to what common perception of ‘professionalism’ is, we should endeavour to define it for ourselves. AACP Council of Deans and APhA Academy of Students of Pharmacy suggest that ‘professionalism’ is the active demonstration of the following traits[1]:

1. Prolonged specialized training in a body of abstract knowledge

2. A service orientation

3. An ideology based on the original faith professed by members

4. An ethic that is binding on the practitioners

5. A body of knowledge unique to the members

6. A set of skills that forms the technique of the profession

7. A guild of those entitled to practice the profession

8. Authority granted by society in the form of licensure/ certification

9. A recognized setting where the profession is practiced

10. A theory of societal benefits derived from the ideology

Move will help S’pore be hub for cutting-edge trials

CLINICAL trials here, a key to developing cutting-edge medical treatments, will be getting a shot in the arm following the launch of the Singapore chapter of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP).

The ACRP, which is based in Virginia in the United States, is an international organisation serving as the primary resource for clinical research professionals in academic medical centres and industries such as biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

The launch of its Singapore chapter will also pave the way for the establishment of a clinical research academy, the Bilcare Research Academy, which will provide professional programmes in Clinical Trial Management.

While the Singapore chapter allows local and regional clinical researchers to gain access to the ACRP’s global library of clinical research resources, the academy will offer a Master’s, diploma or other short-term certification programme in Clinical Trial Management for pharmacy, life sciences and medicine graduates.

The academy, which will start early next year, is a joint partnership between the ACRP and Bilcare Singapore, a pharmaceutical packaging company.

The move to train and develop more clinical research professionals is in line with Singapore’s vision to be the hub for early stage clinical trials, said Mr Yeoh Keat Chuan, executive director of the Economic Development Board’s biomedical sciences group.

Clinical trials, which develop new medical treatments and devices, will provide Singaporeans with “cutting-age medical treatments,” he told Today.

The Health Sciences Authority reported that the number of clinical trial certificates issued had grown from 157 in 2000 to 217 last year.

Mr Yeoh said that while clinical trials are important, investment in “human capital” is equally crucial to support the growth of the biomedical sciences industry — and this is where the ACRP comes in.

The ACRP will provide education and certification to clinical research professionals, while its involvement in the new academy will ensure that the courses offered are of a global standard.

ACRP president and chief executive officer, Mr Thomas Adams, said Singapore was chosen as a regional base for the new academy because it is seen as the hub for regional conferences of clinical research issues in South-east Asia.

The academy, which has plans to set up campuses in other countries in the region, intends to produce about 5,000 world-class clinical research professionals by 2010.

Dear Pharmers,

A Continuation of the 19th Singapore Pharmacy Congress’s Forum will be held on 4th January 2008. As I believe most of you are concerned about the future prospects of Pharmacy in Singapore, this Forum will definitely be a good opportunity for you to hear some of the latest discussions regarding our future. As there are limited vacancies for Pharmacy students, please download the 19th-spc-forum-sign-up-form.doc and e-mail the completed softcopy to nusps.president@gmail.com by 20th December 2007.

$1-billion boost for Biotech industry

Hot on Friday’s announcement by Norwegian company Renewable Energy Corp’s plans to build the world’s largest solar manufacturing complex worth $6.3 billion, Novartis AG yesterday said it will spend US$700 million ($1.02 billion) on a biotechnology manufacturing plant in Singapore.

Representing its largest investment in manufacturing capacity to date, the cell-culture production facility is expected to create about 300 jobs, Europe’s second-biggest drugmaker said. Basel-based Novartis will make so-called monoclonal antibodies used in treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, asthma and spinal cord injuries. Construction will begin next year and the plant is expected to start operations in 2012. “After a thorough selection process, we have chosen Singapore as the ideal location for our new biotech facility. Singapore is attractive because of its increasingly-strong biomedical cluster and its proximity to growth markets in Asia,” said Mr Tom Van Laar, Novartis Pharma head of global technical operations. The announcement was made at the opening of Novartis’ US$180-million pharmaceuticals plant here.

Expected to be fully operational by 2009, the plant will employ 160 people and make products including the Diovan heart drug and Tekturna for hypertension. Novartis has created an internal biotechnology unit, which will employ 250 people by the end of this year, chief executive officer Daniel Vasella told Swiss bi-weekly Finanz und Wirtschaft this month. In April, Novartis bought rights to Cytos Biotechnology AG’s experimental vaccine to fight nicotine addiction for 600 million Swiss francs ($750 million). — AGENCIES

Researchers have discovered a strain of bacteria resistant to all approved drugs used to fight ear infections in children, according to an article to be published tomorrow in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). A pair of pediatricians discovered the strain because it is their standard practice to perform an uncommon procedure called tympanocentesis (ear tap) on children when several antibiotics fail to clear up their ear infections.

[ Read more]