Ousman, As you say I share your concern, and the use of expired products has serious and scary implications. On a point of clarification however, Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) are not strictly speaking antidiarrheals, i.e. they do not prevent diarrhea, rather they just replace vital minerals which are lost through diarrhea. Some years ago before ORS was widely available people were advised to make their own ORS consisting of boiled water, salt and sugar (I've forgotten the proprtions). I can even recall a public information poster to that effect. Antidiarrheals are a very different thing, and are infact very dangerous. Poducts such as "Lomotil" and others have the effect of "freezing" the bowels, leading to the diarrhea (and therefore the bacterial causing it) remaining in the body for a certain length of time. This can actually cause death, especially in young infants. Whether expired ORS specifically present any health risk or not, I am not qualified to say, and is anyway beside the point. Dispensing expired drugs, or indeed any other product (such as food products) should be illegal. If one starts to make exceptions how is one to judge what is a "safe" expired product from an "unsafe" one? Whilst Chief Pharmacists may be able to distinguish between the two, other members of staff might not be able to tell and a precedent would have been made which could extend to more dangerous products. If there was a shortage of ORS would it not have been better just to resort to the previous "home-made" method as advised by the Health Authorities in the past? Yeenduleen ak jaama Tony >>> Ousman Bojang <[log in to unmask]> 9/November/1999 03:55pm >>> Christenson, I share this concern with you. This is very scary. I can understand the need of drugs in the Gambia, but for a pharmacist to declare that "an ordinary ORS doesn't have any side effects. Even if it has expired" she said. That is very misleading. There is no antidiarrheals drugs free from side effects just like any other drugs. Some of the side effects infact are constipation and the adverse reactions of using expired drugs are more likely compared to usable ones. What is more alarming to me is the fact that the pharmacist admitted that they do dispense "Expired drugs" whiles they wait on new ones. There is no excuse for this. They should know their inventory and be responsible enough to know when to place an order. I do not know about the way drugs are regulated in the Gambia, but hence they are not manufactured there, there is no reason why we should not heed to the manufacturers' recommendations. There should be standards to be followed that every manufacturer of drugs follows and are tested to enhance the efficacy, biovailability, potency, purity, potency and safety and toxicity before being supplied to the consumers. I hope there is a law in the Gambia that guarantees the consumers some rights where by they could take lagal action against such. There is no acceptable excuse to dispense expired/wrong meds or dasages to the people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------