Andy Gray
New years and old, bulls and bears, resolutions and fresh starts – there is something comforting in the realisation that much in life is cyclical (promising at least a second chance if we missed the first) or periodic (we can always start again after the break). Both however conjure up images of looking both forward and backward. Guy Butler quotes a Zulu saying - "Uqaph’ eqolo njengonwabu" – he is watching the back like a chameleon. Perhaps too often the pharmacy profession is like that –seeing the challenges of the future, but with one eye always directed longingly at the past, suspicious of what might lie ahead. But, in the same work, Butler cites another saying about the chameleon - "Okwakho kunxanye, kufana nesithupha sonwabu" – yours is peculiar, it is like the thumb of a chameleon. Our profession is peculiar, has a particular history, has taken a particular path – and justifies recognition precisely for its unique knowledge base. This New Year brings a fresh challenge in the move towards implementation of an Essential Drugs Programme in South Africa. Moving from a code list of some 2800 items to an Essential Drugs List of about 700 will require harnessing the unique energies of every pharmacist in the system. That list will also makes itself felt in the private sector, with many schemes using it as the starting point for their formularies. The National Drug Policy has put an awesome load on pharmacy’s shoulders, set this profession at the very core of implementing a policy which is ambitious and wide-ranging. Returning to that chameleon, Oswald Mtshali wrote: "At the tip/of a chameleon’s tongue/there is a pot of boiling glue/to cook flies for breakfast". There’ll be no flies on pharmacy in the New Year! The old is gone, the new is here.
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