Our Reach is Far and Wide

If the particular shop is situated far from the main towns and it's dealing with scheduled medicine, we will hunt them down diligently. It doesn't mean that all the 12 of us is not enough to go around the state. Even if we are overwhelmed with the task at hand, we always have the public to work and cooperate with us. The case above involve a grocery shop in Membakut. It is the same old story of possession for sale of scheduled medicine. Mind you the shop had Dexamethasone (a steroid) and Sulfanilamide (an antibiotic) in stock. Wonder how many Ben Johnson's (no offence there Ben...) and super bugs that they have produced in Membakut....

Selling of Medicine Without Prescription

In Malaysia it is an offence to sell controlled medicine (CM) without a valid prescription. This applies to Group B CM (e.g. anti hypertensives, antibiotics etc.) even for a Pharmacy or from the dispensary counter at a medical clinic without direct consultation from a registered medical practitioner. Such act not only exposes the buyer to health risk but has a wider bigger impact to the general population like antibiotic resistance. As reported in a newspaper, an accused found out the hard way...

We do The Talking via Our Action

One thing for sure is, we don't utilise the press that much. Unlike other enforcement agency in this country we seldom hold press release of seizure and operation success as such. We seldom see articles in the press publicising our operations. It is not too much to state that Pharmacy Enforcement is an underrated enforcement entity especially here in Sabah. This is not helped by our small contingent of 12 hardworking officers. However we don't benchmark ourselves with the other enforcement agencies. Compare to the their workforce, logistics and facilities we are no way near their strengths. However press coverage on our enforcement activity can only be seen at the end stage which is the reports on court cases. For this a big thank you to the diligent reporters based at the courts.

All in all we prefer to do the talking on our own term even though lambasted and criticised by some quarters who don't have all the facts on our background and activities. These are the same people who claim that we are not doing enough. We don't owe anyone an explanation because we do all the work from behind the scene...

The case above involved a Kota Kinabalu based medical practitioner in possession of unregistered psychotropic medicine. In the same court a sundry shop proprietor in Kota Marudu was fined for possession of controlled medicine without authorization.