Bee Farm and Pharmacy Visit

 Today we visited the Phatthanakit bee factory. Pharmacists from the Thai FDA spoke with us about their roles in quality control inspections for medical facilities and food handling facilities. They investigate complaints from consumers as well as pre and post marketing inspections. For cosmetics, they perform tests for four prohibited products mercury, hyrodquinone, steroids, and vitamin A acid. They also regulate pesticide use.

These ladies are packaging honey at the facility. 

This is us cleaning up before entering the honey factory.

We then visited the factory where bee products are produced. Longan honey is a fragrant honey made at the factory that is collected in March. They produce several other types of honey such as forest honey, lychee honey, etc. A testing parameter for honey quality is HMF. HMF is hydroxymethylfurfualdehyde and it occurs naturally in most honeys and usually increases with the age and heat treatment. HMF should be no more than 60.

In the afternoon we visited a pharmacy and met the owner/pharmacist. We were even able to see her dispense a medication. The requirements for the bag that they dispense medications in are similar to our prescription bottles. She also explained to us the different classes of medications. There are OTC drugs that can be dispensed without a pharmacist, such as acetaminophen. Other medications that are considered "dangerous" are then classified into those that need a prescription, and those that do not. All "dangerous medications " require that a pharmacist is on staff to counsel the patient and make them aware of the risks of using the medication. Those that do not need a prescription are medications like antibiotics. Those that do need a prescription are medications like prednisolone. All narcotic medications must be dispensed from a hospital or a clinic. Those cannot be dispensed by a community pharmacist. 

Here are some of the medications that can be dispensed at a pharmacy without a prescription. This was the allergy and antibiotic section. 

This is the medication bag that drugs are dispensed in. 

Here is a photo of us with the pharmacist and the pharmacy students from Chiang Mai University that came with us today.

Thanks! Tiffany