A Taree pharmacist believes new restrictions on the purchase of codeine will have a significant impact on the local health system.
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The restrictions will come into effect on February 1, restricting the availability of the drug to prescription use only.
“It’s going to have a huge impact on people who need acute pain relief and are used to being able to come in and buy what’s a reasonably effective product whenever they need it,” Priceline pharmacist Michael Kent said.
“It’ll increase the workload of doctors quite considerably.
“The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has created this system to restrict the use of these products to prescription only use. The system falls down where people can just go to 10 different doctors in a day and get prescriptions. There’s no recording, there’s no linking of the use of the medication.
“Yes, there is an abuse of prescription opioids today, so by making it prescription only makes it a little bit more difficult, but for people who are dedicated to obtaining and abusing opioids it’ll still happen.
“Only 10 per cent of people who use the drug abuse it, and those people need real help, they need a real system that will get them help, and the only way to do it is a national database.
“It’s hard enough now to see a doctor in a small town. You’d be lucky to get a doctor appointment in seven to 14 days at any practice in a rural area, and if you have pain today you can’t wait 14 days.”
To prepare for the change, Australia’s peak non-government organisation for rural and remote health, the National Rural Health Alliance is developing specialised information for people living in rural and remote areas to ensure that they are aware of the change and how it may affect them.
Alliance CEO, Mark Diamond, explained that people in rural and remote areas are more vulnerable to the potential negative impact of such changes, due to different levels of service access.
“Long distances, financial factors and lack of available services make it much more difficult for people living in rural and remote areas to access GPs, allied health professionals and specialists,” he said.
“For this reason, we are developing resources to ensure that the seven million people living in rural and remote areas know in advance about the changes and where to go for assistance if they feel they need it.”
The move to restrict the availability of medications containing codeine was unanimously agreed on by the TGA and is in line with changes introduced in many other parts of the world to reduce rates of opiate addiction and overdose. But, Michael Kent doesn’t believe it will solve the problem.
“The only effective way to control opioid use it to have a national link, similar to the one used for pseudoephedrine use,” he said.
“The pharmacy profession has proposed that to the TGA. Rather than make it impossible to access the medication, it provides us with a live link, so when someone walks in gets some then walks around the corner to get more, we would instantly know.
“What they are proposing has no link, so if they are really trying to target those people, it’s going to fail.”
Individuals and organisations in rural and remote Australia wishing to receive more information about the planned changes can visit www.ruralhealth.org.au/codeine to have their details added to the mailing list.
Funding for this initiative is provided by the Australian Government.