Cape Town - The South African Pharmacy Council (SAPC) has said it is prepared for any potential court challenge to a high court decision that has authorised pharmacists to manage and prescribe medicine to patients with HIV and/ or TB.
A doctors’ organisation, the IPA Foundation, lost its high court bid to set aside the Pharmacist-Initiated Management of Antiretroviral Therapy (Pimart) initiative.
However, during a media briefing yesterday, the SAPC said it was time for doctors and pharmacists to work together.
SAPC president Mogologolo Phasha said although there was a possibility the IPC might appeal the judgment in the Supreme Court of Appeal, “we encourage them not to pursue that route as the real winner in all this was the patient and patient rights”.
Phasha said 900 pharmacists, which was 5% of those on the SAPC register, had already been trained on Pimart and were awaiting permits from the director-general of Health before they could start practising.
In their case, the IPA had argued that it was beyond a pharmacist’s scope of practice to diagnose and treat diseases. They argued that allowing pharmacists to provide services currently only offered by medical practitioners and nurses registered to provide Nurse Initiated Management of Antiretroviral Therapy, materially and adversely affected the rights of its members.
The SAPC countered that the decision to implement Pimart and its implementation fall within its statutory mandate. They said the narrow scope of Pimart as primarily developed to initiate antiretroviral treatment limited to PrEP, PEP, and first-line Antiretroviral Therapy plus initiation of TB-Preventive Therapy, was in line with National Department of Health guidelines.
They said it was difficult to see how PIMART adversely affected any rights or legitimate expectations of medical practitioners.
Dismissing the IPA application with costs, Pretoria High Court Judge Elmarie Van der Schyff said that the question of whether the implementation of PIMART materially and adversely affected any person's rights or legitimate expectations was a vexing question.
She said: “The tension between pharmacists and doctors in South Africa has been the theme of a study with the results published in 1998.”
She said the study revealed a “deep ongoing sense of competition” and that the issue was neither new, nor limited to South Africa.