Thailand: Antibiotics spending to be halved

[xylophone]

Agree with many of the posters as regards the amount of pills/tablets one gets if one goes to the doctor. So much so that if I have to go to see one, and I see him start to write out the prescription I already tell him that I have paracetamol at home, don't want xyz or the like, or the other myriad of tablets they want you to take, just something to treat the main event, which for me is usually a sinus problem.

So sure there is vast overprescription of all sorts of drugs by doctors, and by pharmacists when asked, however a lot of this also comes down to the person concerned, because I know of many Thai girls (many of my mates own bars) who at the hint of a sore throat will go to the pharmacy and buy tetracycline (because it's cheap) and only take it for 3 or 4 days once the symptoms start to abate/or only have enough money to buy it for a few days. Low and behold, it returns a few days later and the same routine is re-enacted.

There is also a tendency to over-prescribe medication and I noticed on here one poster was prescribed ciprofloxacin for an ailment, and I have no idea what that was and it may well have been the correct antibiotic, but it is a fairly powerful antibiotic and can have some unwanted side-effects, when many other antibiotics may do the job just as well – – what I'm saying is sometimes they use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.