It is a nice topic and very common in countries that don't control prescription medicines. I have experience of living in two countries with two different policies. I was born in Brazil and now I live in Canada. When I used to live in Brazil any medication was free of prescription, except some considered black label (such as psychotropic drugs and other drugs that can cause addiction). My mother-in-law was one of those who when feels sick she takes anything by herself without going to the doctor, so I know many people like your uncle.
Now I live in Canada for almost 5 years and not many drugs we can buy without a prescription, some analgesics (like Tylenol), antihistaminics and flatulence drugs are the ones that we can buy without a prescription. That avoids most of the problems that you cited. However, I have a chronic disease and I take the same medication since 2005. In Brazil was easy to buy it all the time. Now I need a prescription every time that it ends. It is easy when you have a family doctor. But for example, recently I moved to another province here, 4,000 km away from my previous home. When I arrived at my new residency place, I didn't have a family doctor for me, so I had to go to an emergency room from the hospital, and stay in a line for a couple of hours, just to get a prescription from a doctor. So, there are some cons to being very restricted. In my point of view, the two are:
. Chronic disease patients
. The decision about what drug can be bought with or without a prescription is questionable sometimes.
For the second point, I will give an example. Here there is one or two brands of nasal corticosteroid spray that you can buy without a prescription, but some other types you can't, and mostly it is the same mechanisms. Corticosteroids in the bloodstream can cause lots of problems if the usage is abused. But since in this case they are used localized in a topic way in your nose, not much is absorbed by the bloodstream. Why only two brands can be bought without a prescription and others similar we can't? I know that it is a burocratic way to release drugs here, all antihistaminics in here were recently added to the called over-the-counter medicines without a prescription.
Well thanks for bringing the topic.
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Whereas I understand your specific case (and this is a pity you need to go to the hospital for a prescription), I am afraid that it is impossible to account for all specific cases when designing rules. They are just statistically too rare. In other words, can we put all the people suffering from chronic disease in the same sample or do we need to consider them as individual cases? What do you think?
Well I am not a public health politics expert! but in my case I wish that there was a more easier method to reach a health care practitioner once you move. For example, I used to have a family doctor in my former province, I moved because of work, so I start from 0. And it is difficult to find a family doctor in Canada. But for my luck, I was lucky again, I applied for a family doctor and he accepted us, even being full. I don't know what was the criteria to be accepted, but maybe my condition and/or the fact that we have a 18 months old baby with use influenced a bit. They should create a way that even with this not availability of family physicians, to facilitate the life of chronic disease patients, maybe for those patients the prescription being accepted in all provinces? I don't know we can think lots of different things but I don't know-how are easily implemented.
The situation is similar to France. it is damned hard to find a family doctor when you don't have one, and things need to be restarted at every change of place (believe me, I moved more than 10 times in my life, so that I know what I am talking about).
Where are you know in Canada? I know a bit how it works in Quebec as my in-laws are from there, but I have no idea about the rest of the country.
I agree. In your case, an online appointment may work out smoothly and nicely, for instance. However, I am by far not a public health expert too :D
I was closer to Quebec before when I was living in Atlantic Canada, now I am in the praries, in Alberta. Where I was living was the only official bilingual province in Canada, New Brunswick. I was investing a lot in my French because of that. Now I am living in a place where no one speaks French. So weird! The only guy that I practice french with, now, is the security guy from my job.
The language situation in Canada is very interesting. My impression is that for many, they just either hate the other language and anything related to it, or at best don't care about it. This is also what is on-going in other countries (that I know) with several official languages. I think here about Belgium.
I believe this two-language situation should be used instead as a strength, but it is rarely the case.
everyone thinks about that...it is crazy. It is part of the government's fault as well. For example I was living in New Brunswick, it is the only officially bilingual province. It should be paradise right? But no. You have two health authorities (francophone and one anglophone), the anglophone schools have what they call French Immersion, but it looks like it isn 't enough to transform kids into bilinguals in most cases. So Lots of jobs requires you to be bilingual and the anglophones gets some anger about that and they hate francophones. In the other hand, the francophones there feel also the pressure to learn English , and even if they know English, they prefer to talk in French; I heard people suing nurses in the hospital because they didn't talk in french with them. It is a crazy situation like you mentioned...
This really sounds like Belgium (in which I have spent more than 20 years of my life :D ).
Similarly in my country, there are a lot of medications that do not require prescriptions to purchase. The fact that there are no standard healthcare and following the fact that a lot of people live below the poverty line allows people to purchase medications from roadside medicine shops.
To be factual, both have their sides, but it is better to have a priscription from a medical practitioner, than to purchase a medication you feel is good because of pharma advertisement. I have heard a lot of people use ciprofloxacin tablet when they suffer from Typhoid (Salmolena typhi) only to get to the hospital and the doctor tell them the medication wasn't doing well to inhibit the growth more less cure the patient. Intravainous treatment is then employed.
This is very touching, i must say. Having to wait in line for long to get prescriptions isn't a good thing.
Thanks a lot for reading through my post