A group of pharmacists yesterday marched in Taipei to protest a Ministry of Health and Welfare interpretation that allows people who have not passed the national pharmacist’s license examination to sell traditional Chinese medicine.
The ministry on March 18 issued an interpretation of Article 103 of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法) that would allow people who meet certain criteria to apply for a certificate and register to become a traditional Chinese medicine dealer.
Under interpretation order No. 1141860113, people who graduated from traditional Chinese medicine or crude medicine related departments of a university or college, have acquired 35 credits from core Chinese medicine courses and have more than one year of practical experience at a Chinese medicine dealer can apply for a certificate and register to sell Chinese medicine.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
The Federation of Taiwan Pharmacists Associations said it gathered about 5,000 people for yesterday’s rally on Ketagalan Boulevard to protest the interpretation.
The group said that as traditional Chinese medicine is categorized as drugs, it should be distributed by registered pharmacists, with dealers required to pass the national examination to obtain a license.
The group staged yesterday’s march to “defend professionalism without compromise,” after the government did not respond to their April 22 protest outside the ministry in Taipei, association president Huang Jin-shun (黃金舜) said.
Medicines need to be handled professionally, and pharmacists’ duties include managing, prescribing and monitoring drugs, he said, adding that if traditional Chinese medicine was designated as food products, pharmacists would have no opinion on the matter, but they are listed as drugs.
Drugs should be managed by pharmacists to ensure safety, and pharmacists should go through the education-examination-training-practice procedure to ensure professionalism, Huang said.
Allowing people who only took courses without examination to become “professionals” is disrespectful to pharmacists, he said.
The National Union of Chinese Medicine Association has said that the ministry’s interpretation helped guarantee the development of the Chinese medicine industry.
However, Huang said that if the traditional Chinese medicine community wants to attract pharmacists to the field, it should improve the practice environment in the sector.
For example, it should advocate for medicines prescribed by Chinese medicine doctors to be covered by the National Health Insurance or require that only pharmacists dispense medicine at Traditional Chinese medicine clinics.
In the past 20 years, the number of traditional Chinese medicine dealers that hired pharmacists has increased from 421 to 1,279, Federation of Taiwan Pharmacists Associations spokesman Huang Yen-ju (黃彥儒) said.
The protest aims to ensure that distributors of traditional Chinese medicine have accurate knowledge of the medicines they sell and to urge the government to clarify which of the medicines are considered food products and which are drugs, he said.
Chiang Chen-yu (江振聿), a fourth generation traditional Chinese medicine dealer and secretary-general of the Taipei Medical University School of Pharmacy Alumni Association, said his grandfather, father and uncle are all traditional Chinese medicine dealers, which is why he followed the law and studied pharmacy.
The past custom of passing down the business from father to son cannot ensure that the correct knowledge of the medicines has been inherited, and even he has trouble understanding his grandfather’s “encrypted” formulas, he said.
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