SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF HEALTH

Rector, distinguished guests, pharmacists, colleagues.

I would like to welcome you to the Ministry of Health on this special occasion. It is neither every day nor every year that a book on pharmacy is published by a Maltese pharmacist and is well received internationally. On this occasion I would like to share with you some reflections, as food for thought, on the established profession of pharmacy.

If the basis of pharmacy is the knowledge of, and the power to control nature, then all societies have possessed pharmacy. Without some grasp of the seasons and the climatic changes accompanying them, of the habits of all living things, the properties of basic materials, of what makes people ill or healthy, no tribe, even the most 'primitive' could ever have survived.

It is hoped that pharmacy is one of the sciences that has transformed such hard-won experience into system, into theory, into bodies of truth, which satisfy the human need to understand as well as to act.

Here, I would like to propose that you look far back and point to Babylonian or Egyptian science, or more recently to Hindu, Islamic or Chinese Science. These traditions of understanding nature and proposing solutions to the ills facing the human being, preventive as well as curative - the Chinese solution in particular, have been immensely impressive.

Having said that, this learned gathering today will acknowledge that there is something unique about Western science - and pharmacy in particular. This uniqueness crops up from that body of facts, theories, practices first systematised by the Greeks, revitalised by the renaissance, revolutionised by the so called New Science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and advancing at an astonishing rate ever since. For good or bad, European, or latterly, Western civilization has come to master the globe over the last five centuries, not least that in the field of pharmacy.

Now my colleagues, pharmacists, all health professionals ladies and gentlemen, Science teaches us to be critical and objective, and so warns us of the dangers of thinking that one's own viewpoint is automatically the correct one. Philosophers have rightly insisted that we have no way of proving that our science is true, and is the only truth.

This brings me right to the subject of today's occasion. I have the pleasure of presenting to you the outstanding unique and challenging work of a young pharmacist - a young enthusiastic lady - who went into enormous effort and spared no pains to let the truth about the validity of pharmacy practice be known and analysed - a very daring yet outstanding achievement. This search for the soul and body of truth, she presented in a scientific manner well researched at doctoral level and exposed in the form of the book - Validation Instruments for Community Pharmacy : Pharmaceutical Care for the Third Millenium which I have the honour and great privilege to present to you now.

It would be presumptuous and short sighted to dismiss everything else as ignorance and error and to assume that the work I am presenting to you for your consideration today possesses a monopoly of truth, still less of wisdom. Yet, all the same, all my experience clearly tells me of the unmatched power of the young, the small and the fresh and new. Ladies and gentlemen, science has done a lot and it could do a lot more. It can and indeed did eradicate for example smallpox from the world, with pharmacists playing a crucial role.

Science, correctly used, could also be the way forward towards validation of pharmaceutical care, a pillar of the pharmacy practice today - if one has persons like Dr. Azzopardi who used her inspirations to propose to the international body a collection of scientific tools to evaluate pharmaceutical care in community pharmacy practice.

What has made Dr. Azzopardi's work so uniquely successful? I do not have a single answer. But I have certainly the honour and great privilege to present to you part of the answer which I have no hesitation or doubt to mention. My dear colleagues how shall I put it? Let's make it straightforward and immediately state that it was you, colleague pharmacists, those gathered here today who three years ago gladly and enthusiastically participated in this study by opening your doors and granting access to Ms. Azzopardi. Your help and cooperation provided something much more important than financial support; it provided to Lillian the necessary moral encouragement to pursue her difficult task especially by enabling her to establish contacts and gain experience from colleagues in the community pharmacies. For this, on behalf of Dr. Azzopardi, the department of pharmacy of the University of Malta, the Ministry of Health and all those who have used and adopted Azzopardi's work I would like to express gratitude for your overwhelming generosity.

The authors of the appendix that follows the book, collectively with Dr. Azzopardi, address themselves to show why pharmacy has never ossified, never became a dead-end (unlike say, alchemy) but rather continuously renewed itself, extended its intellectual credibility and met the needs of industry, technology and society, and especially those of the patient. The book will speak for itself but a few broad comments will help to set the scene.

The keynotes are scientific and comprehensive.

Pharmacy Practice, as we know now has long been a pragmatic tool encompassing different disciplines, physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology and so forth – broadly, the physical sciences, the life sciences and the human sciences.

How would one validate such an array of subjects? Lilian precisely succeeded to do this. This is another reason I would propose being the raison d''�tre behind the excellent reception the book has had from pharmacy organisations particularly in Europe. The work expanded in intellectual content and challenge, definitely beyond what was envisaged initially by her supervisor, when the proposal was submitted for enrolling as a Ph.D. student.

In fact the result of this research led the 400 year old University of Malta and in particular, the 400 year old Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, and closer to us the 400 year old department of Pharmacy, to award its first Ph.D. in Pharmacy Practice, to none other than Lilian Azzopardi, author of the book I am presenting to you today.

This work is now being recognised worldwide. Announcing this publication is the Foreword written by the President of the International Pharmaceutical Federation. Dr. Peter Kielgast. I cannot find better words than those he himself expressed in the foreword to the book.

I quote : "In today's market-oriented, economics driven society, all professions face the question: What do I do for my customers that makes my contribution unique?" Lilian has provided us with the tools to answer this question in a valid way.

The book presents a sub-title; 'Pharmaceutical care for the third millennium'. One may question the extension of such a sub-title to a book on validation tools. The F.I.P. President writes on this connection very clearly and I invite you to listen to his words again "the pharmacist has a role in all aspects of drug therapy, from evaluating a prescription written by a physician to monitoring the effectiveness of a patient's treatment. Over the past century, pharmacy and medicine have come a long way, but a new millennium is not the time for pharmacists to become complacent and rest on their laurels ... The concept of validation of community pharmacy services may be the tool that can lead to a breakthrough."

A need to re-engineer the professional status of the pharmacist as a provider of a unique service that is both cost-efficient and cost-effective to society is acknowledged by all. The tools required for this important exercise to be carried out by pharmacists have been presented in this book.

This is how Dr. Martin Schulz, chairman of the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe puts it, the book "provides the tools necessary for validation of community pharmacy. These tools can and should be used by community pharmacists to monitor the standards of services provided and to measure the impact of the intervention of the pharmacist in a community setting. As in the case with many good things, the tools are simple and practical."

I would like to observe what prompted Pharmaceutical Products Press, an imprint of Haworth Press Incorporation and precisely its Executive editor Professor Smith, to invite a pharmacist from our tiny island of Malta to present her research work in the form of a book. This is revealed in their statement on the publication and I quote "In the current era of cost-containment, health care providers, insurance companies, and consumers demand scientifically tested, proven systems for monitoring the standards of services provided by community pharmacists. Validation Instruments for Community Pharmacy : Pharmaceutical care for the Third Millennium puts such a system in your hands.

This system was adopted by the Swiss Pharmaceutical Society and can benefit communities around the world who are considering the implementation of a validation system to gauge and document the performance of their community pharmacist. With case studies and samples of surveys that weigh the effectiveness of community pharmacies, this essential guide will help you implement cost-effective operations and ensure that customers are getting the best possible services."

Finally I feel there is a lesson to be learnt. Dr. Azzopardi's achievement has been recognised internationally in the same year that the World Health Report has classified Malta's Health System in fifth place out of 191 countries. Not bad for a health system that is frequently criticised if not outrightly vilified locally. Both events prove how hard it is to be a prophet within our borders, a product of our national inferiority complex.

I feel that Dr. Azzopardi's achievement is bidding us to shed this complex. She has shown us once more that in spite of our limitations, we can hold our own and even excel internationally when we substitute hard work for superficiality, a quality shown by many past and contemporary illustrious members of the Maltese medical and allied professions. These classes have shown the way and invite all sectors of Maltese society to be bold and compete with self-confidence especially now that we are embarking in courageously taking our rightful place in Europe.

Thank you all.