Ground Views and Random Thoughts

At the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in the Philippines, there has been a myth that exiting through the Arch of the Centuries while studying there will bar you from graduating from the university. Well, that happened to me, not permanently but for a while. That is because, way back in 2012, as a fresh blood in the university and a new M.S. Pharmacy student, I happened to roam around the historical landmarks of the campus after the first day of school. I remember it was a Saturday because the classes I enrolled in for my  degree  were all on the weekends since I was working on weekdays as a full-time Pharmacy instructor at a different institution. At the time, I  hadn’t even opened the student handbook or read any school announcement. In other words, I was too confident that everything would be perfectly fine without doing either of these. The Arch of the Centuries, UST 2018 Photo Credit: Eri Yunson    With my desire to get to know the university on that Saturday an

  March 29, 2018 President Duterte has now included in his famed drug war the fake or counterfeit drugs. Counterfeit drugs, as defined in Republic Act 8203 otherwise known as Special Law on Counterfeit Drugs, are products with the wrong or contaminated ingredients, with the correct ingredients but not in their required amounts, or without the active ingredients resulting to decreased drug safety, efficacy, quality, strength or purity. Counterfeit medicines can also be defined as mislabeled or with fake packaging, and can apply to both generic and branded products. To boot, these drugs are not registered with the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and did not go through validation and standard tests to confirm their quality, safety, and efficacy. Counterfeiting drugs is a global problem, a big business worth billions of dollars, targeting mostly developing countries like the Philippines. It is a massive trend to criminals but it is also a public health risk and