IPSF APRO Newsletter, Issue No. 16

Hello IPSF APRO readers, I am Henny and I am the Regional Media and Publications Officer of IPSF Asia-Pacific Regional Office. This newsletter is the second APRO newsletter of this term and we are so proud of it. In this newsletter we focused on IPSF APRO campaigns, and also members experiences in another organisations.

I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in the newsletter, the writers, design committee, editorial and translation committee, and everyone else who has contributed to this newsletter! Enjoy your reading!

Viva la Pharmacie!, Henny Aryani

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Today the issue of anti microbial resistance has been spread all over the world. Anti-microbial resistance had been a focus to society, especially scientists, because it has one of the worst impacts to health.

If a microbe becomes resistant to a drug, it will increase the time for the people that are infected by the microbe to become healthy. This will also increase the mortality because when microbes become resistant to the anti-microbial drugs, it becomes difficult to find a new potent drug to cure the disease and it takes a longer time (minimal 2 years) to get the new potent drug to cure the disease. Pharmacists role in this case is really important because it has been our task to provide education about all drugs, including anti-microbial drugs, so society can use anti-microbial drugs for the proper function, and not abuse the drugs for simple diseases which are not the target.

we could spread this information to the society while we’re still attending university. We don’t have to be a licensed pharmacist first. We can start it from the beginning phase, so we hope this issue can reduce over time. From that point, we started to make a concept about what action we will take. Finally, we discussed a concept to gather the students in our campus to join this campaign.

We tried to communicate this with all of the students in our faculty to join, especially the new students.

The new students will gain a new experience by joining this activity, as well as having an added value and also more information about the topic. This campaign gathered about 30 students. On the day before we had the campaign, the campaign participants had a discussion, as well as a consultation with the lecturer about the microbial-resistance issue to get the information right.

This issue became a starting point for our organization which is BEM KMFA UGM, Yogyakarta, to take this topic.

We believed that

We did this campaign on the 21st of February 2016 at the Jogging Track Graha Sabha Pramana, Gadjah Mada University. We decided on this place because we thought that the people who came for exercise would have the same perspective as us, which is to have a healthy body,

which would make communicating with them easier than with someone who does not have any perspective of being healthy.

We did this campaign by spreading leaflets with the content about microbial resistance, what it is, why it happens, and how to prevent it. Besides that, we also shared mineral water with the people that were exercising that morning. We educated people about what we had discussed before. We also had a clown mascot called Capsi to attract people. We talked to teenagers, adults and also children with their parents. We planned a target that society should know about this issue. Before we educated them, we first asked them whether they already knew about antimicrobial resistance or not. We got so many responses, there were people that knew as well as people that didn’t.

We encouraged people that already knew about this issue to keep spreading this information to others that don’t know so more people will know and we can increase prevention. For those who didn’t know, we asked what they would usually do when they’re accepting anti microbial drugs. One student gave us a statement that made us interested in telling him more.

He said that first when he was sick he went to the doctor and got the antibiotics, then when he got sick for a second time with the same symptoms, he didn’t go to the doctor again but instead he went to the drugstore and bought the antibiotics by himself. As we know, this is not right because we can’t be sure the disease is caused by bacteria yet.

So after hearing his experience, we told him that’s not the right way to do things, because it can cause antibiotic resistance.

Then he looks like “Oh, I see, I’m wrong”. We suggested for him to not do that again next time, and encouraged him to spread this information to others.

Many people also didn’t know the simple points to take antibiotics wisely, such as finishing all the given drugs.

The campaign ran well, and many people were excited to accept this information. They were also cooperative when we shared the information. After we educated them we took photos of them with accessories that we had made and also our mascot, Capsi. We hope from this campaign more people will know about anti-microbial resistance so that we can prevent it well.

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donesia because a Sultan acts as the governor of this special region. Yogyakarta is also known for being a student city because it attracts a lot of students from all over Indonesia to live and study in the many universities scattered around the city.

Going back to anti-microbial resistance, pharmacy students from Sanata Dharma University carried out an AMR Campaign on the 18th and 19th of February.

About 65 student volunteers signed up for the campaign, which was carried out twice, over two days. Why did we decide to do the campaign twice? Because we thought that it was really important to share information about AMR to our friends in our campus as well as the general population. The first day was on our campus, while the second one we carried out in Yogyakarta’s Science Centre called “Taman Pintar”.

Nowadays, anti-microbial resistance has become a big concern, not just in the world of pharmacy, but as a public health concern as well. Many diseases that can be cured by the use of antibiotics have now suddenly become difficult to recover from.

This is because the microbes causing them have become resistant due to the improper use of antibiotics. Pharmacists have the special job of educating people on how to safely and correctly use antibiotics, and we, BEMF USD, as a member of the association of IPSF have carried out an Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) Campaign in order to do so.

BEMF USD is the student executive body of the University of Sanata Dharma, located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Located in the center of the island of Java, it is a unique place within the Republic of In-

The first campaign was on Friday the 18th of February, and it lasted from morning until the afternoon. We communicated information about AMR to our fellow university students so that they could become more concerned about this issue, and hopefully they will share it with their family, relatives and other friends. About 150 people came to our booth, learned about AMR, talked and discussed for a bit. They also signed an Anti-Microbial Pledge which promises the safe and correct use of antibiotics, and for that they got a free vitamin C tablet as well as a flu kit. We did not think that there would be a lot of our friends who would be interested in visiting our stand, considering that this is the first time that we held an AMR Campaign on our campus, but it seems that we were proven wrong because many people were very enthusiastic about it.

The second campaign was carried out the next day on Saturday afternoon. We

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picked Taman Pintar Science Centre to do our campaign because usually there are a lot of parents who bring their kids there to play and learn. We thought that it would be a great opportunity to educate the parents on the safe usage of anti-microbials. On this particular campaign we focused on the fact that the common cold, a.k.a. “flu”, is not caused by bacteria but by viruses. We told the parents that the flu cannot be treated with anti-microbials, so we gave them flu kits that contained tissues, a bottle of mineral water, masks, vitamin C tablets, a sticker and a brochure. Initially we were a little hesitant because campaigns like this are seldom done in our city, so we were afraid that people’s responses weren’t going to be that good. But it turns out that our fears were unfounded. The responses from the parents were really good; they accepted our information, they asked questions and they were really happy to receive our flu kit.

We’re so happy that our effort has paid off. We learned how to communicate a particular piece of information in a simple way that an average person can understand. We shared the information about anti-microbial resistance that will hopefully be really useful for other people. Let us all help in spreading this information, viva la pharmacie!

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The Annual Congress has different aims each year. The aim this year was what pharmaceutical students think about how to involve in medical areas 10-20 years later, as the next generation. The reason why we chose this aim is “Health Care 2035 Report”.

There were 17 workshops, for example Pharmaceutical English workshop, Medical advertisement for doctors workshop, etc. But I’ll explain a symposium about “Health Care 2035 Report”.

This report, which the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced, says that Japanese citizens must learn how to live a healthy life and practice it. It is important to live a healthy life to prevent diseases, and taking an interest in human biology, diseases, and drug information is needed to successfully prevent disease.

However, this report didn’t mention anything about pharmacists, even though they can have a great role in the area of preventative medicine. The symposium was held by special delegates such as the regional officer of APRO, Janet Mirzaei, a public official from the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare of Japan, and a lecturer from Hoshi University. This was a very difficult issue to discuss, but in the end, we had to write about what kind of pharmacist we want to be and what we want to do. Of course we all wrote different things, but we all hoped that the government would keep us future pharmacists in mind as well.

In the two days, many pharmaceutical students thought about the effects of future medical areas from various points of view through many kinds of workshops as the next generation. We hope participants got something for the future.

IPSF APRO held the World No Tobacco Day public health campaign in May, since May was the awareness month of tobacco. World No Tobacco day is one of APRO’s focus projects is because Asia pacific has the highest number of tobacco users and is the prime target of tobacco companies. China, India, and Indonesia are the key markets of tobacco. The aim of this campaign was to expand our knowledge and awareness to the public and provide opportunities for all pharmacy student to interact with the public through educating them on how exactly smoking affects their health.

The dangerous effects of smoking are nothing new, as the media has constantly exposed us to the dangers about cigarette smoking. But knowing about the dangers and understanding how it affects your life are two different things. Lots of people think that it’s nicotine that kills you, but in fact there are thousands of other chemicals you inhale and are absorbed by your body from cigarette smoke that are the most detrimental to your health.

When smoking, the heat from fire causes substances to change from a solid state to a vapor. In cigarettes, this releases nicotine which is absorbed into your bloodstream through the lungs, causing increased heart rate, constricted blood vessels, release of dopamine and causing feelings of alertness. But nicotine is a stimulant, once it’s no longer present you crash and crave more, which ultimately leads to addiction in many people.

car exhaust fumes (and sometimes used to commit suicide), and formaldehyde to preserve dead bodies.

Smoking is both a physical addiction and a psychological habit. Suddenly eliminating the regular intake of nicotine will cause your body to experience physical withdrawal symptoms and cravings. One of the best things you can do to help yourself (or your loved ones) quit is to identify the things that make you smoke.

The World No Tobacco Day 2016 Campaign helped educate and raise awareness of tobacco within the community. It was a good chance for pharmacy students to adapt their knowledge and skills to implement activities into the public. The campaign consisted of education posters, brochures, a photo booth and fun activities!

Smoking only takes 6 seconds for the active compounds (eg. Nicotine) to reach the nervous system unlike chewing tobacco which takes much more time, but you also have to inhale smoke in the process. This smoke consists of burned particles which cause tar to accumulate in your body, which causes carcinogenic effects, blackens teeth and destroys taste buds.

Acetylene, ammonia, benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, cyanide and methanol are some of the other chemicals you inhale when you smoke a cigarette. You may realize that a lot of these compounds exist in other places, such as acetylene for welding torches, carbon monoxide from your

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It is everyone’s right to get a clean, fresh air from the environment. But unfortunately, there are still people who are deliberately pollute the air by smoking in public areas, even in the campus. Not only is harmful for the environment, but also bothers people around and undoubtedly turn them into passive smokers. We are all aware of passive smokers could also have the same health risk as the smokers. It is definitely unfair for the passive smokers and therefore, it would be really respectful for the smokers if they can smoke at allocated places. At least, they will not harm other innocent people.

As the only health-related student organisation in our campus, we are very concerned about the impact of students who smoke in the inappropriate areas, how they can have bad impact to the passive smokers. Therefore, to celebrate World No Tobacco Day on 31st May 2016,

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we planned to hold a campaign to increase the awareness of the students regarding the impact of smoking to people around them and themselves. We also wanted to inform the available smoking areas in our campus as they are not well advertised in our campus.

Our organisation did social media and street campaigns. We made a video for the social media campaign showing opinions from passive/secondhand smokers. We interviewed 13 students from our campus on how they feel and what they would do when people smoke near them, also what messages they would like to deliver to the smokers. The video was uploaded on 31st May 2016 on Facebook, twitter, LINE, and Youtube. As of 7th June 2016, the video has reached 1,131 people and got 337 views on Facebook. The video is also in the process to be shown on the big screen in front of the main gate of our

campus. Our video can be accessed via our official Facebook page (facebook.com/arspraeparandi) or this link bit.ly/tanpa-tembakau.

The street campaign was held on 2nd June 2016. We distributed posters to 27 student organisations in our campus.

The content of the poster is about the impact of the smoking for both smokers and non-smokers. We also provided map of smoking areas in our campus. The campaign was welcomed warmly by the students. There were many students who still did not know about World No Tobacco Day before and through this campaign, they are now aware of this event. We also asked the students from each student organisation to display the poster on their information board so more students can read it .

Our goal through this campaign is to encourage students in our campus become more aware of the risk of smoking, how they can also affect and give bad impact to other people by smoking in pub-

lic places. Furthermore, by knowing this issue, people who smoke should be more respectful to the non-smokers by smoking only in the smoking area available. For the passive smokers, we want to encourage them to muster up their courage for their rights not to breathe cigarette smoke as everyone has the right to breathe clean, fresh air.

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For the first time, I was selected as an IPSF representative to attend the 69th World Health Assembly by WHO in Geneva, Switzerland from the 23rd - 28th of May 2016. A group of 30 participants, many of which were also attending for the first time, all met up on the night before WHA started and attended an introductory dinner (with delicious cheese fondue) to become familiar with each other and learn more about what to expect at the World Health Assembly. On Monday morning, following a very lengthy security process, we were all able to attend the first session in the main hall in which WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, gave an inspiring speech about the achievements that were made in the past year and what we all need to work on in the future.

The World Health Assembly covered many topics (that were listed as individual agenda items) this year including: Emergency Health (prepared, surveillance and response), Migration and Health, the Global Vaccine Action Plan, Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases, Anti-Microbial Resistance, SSFFC, Ending Childhood Obesity, Maternal Infant and Young Child Nutrition, Health Systems as well as addressing technical internal matters such as finalising the WHO programme budget for 2016-17, working on WHO reform, electing the Executive Board and many more. These agenda items are split into 3 main categories: the Plenary, Committee A and Committee B. Most of these sessions would be held at the same time in different rooms within the United Nations Office in Geneva. As a result, many of us attended different sessions and listened to member states, non-governmental organisation and other stakeholders present statements in relation to the various items on the agenda.

WHO and other stakeholders. IPSF was also able to present four high-quality policy statements based on the following agenda items: the Global Vaccine Action Plan, SSFFC products, addressing the global shortages of medicines as well as the draft global strategy on human resources for health. These statements will feature in the upcoming IPSF newsletter, so keep an eye out! We also held a side event, in collaboration with IFPMA, in regards to SSFFC products in which our Chairperson of Public Health, Ms. Ana Duarte did a presentation on this issue from the perspective of pharmacy students.

It was a very successful event and all the members of the IPSF delegation should be acknowledged for their contributions. Following the exhausting days at WHA, our Organising Team helped to prepare fun social events at night where we would have time to meet up altogether and discuss the day’s events among other things. In summary, attending the WHA was a wonderful opportunity to witness the discussion of some of the most important health topics facing humanity today and it provided the inspiration for many IPSF students to become more involved in promoting public health. I would urge those of you interested in joining WHA in the future or wanting to know more about public health to contact myself at chairperson@apro.ipsf.org or the Chairperson of Public Health at publichealth@ipsf.org.

It was interesting to learn about what each country was doing to tackle the issue at hand. Many countries stated how various plans were implemented at a national, regional and local level and called for more support from

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From 8 th -10 th January 2016 Indonesia’s national association (ISMAFARSI) hosted International Pharmacy Week (IPW) in Bali and I had the privilege of representing IPSF at the IPSF booth. This was my first visit to Indonesia and I won’t lie. It was hot, it was humid, food was spicy (yet delicious), and I felt like I was in an action movie every time I had to cross a road. Thankfully, the liaison officers assigned to me by ISMAFARSI made sure I survived comfortably to attend the event.

My role at the event was to allow individual students belonging to ISMAFARSI the opportunity communicate personally with someone from IPSF. Indonesia is a country with the world’s 4th largest population living on over 900 islands (17,508) in total. Understandably, maintaining the line of communication between national association and individual students can be challenging, let alone the communication between IPSF and individual students. Some members even have limited access to internet. I delivered a speech about IPSF to the participants in the main hall, introducing us to many for the first time. It was great providing an opportunity for students to approach and directly ask me further questions about IPSF and the opportunities we provide.

The event itself was only 3 days, which meant it was 2 days of intensive lessons with a final day of field trip and a gala night. During this time I was able to meet quite a number of students from other faculties that come under ISMAFARSI. Some students had specific questions about IPSF, while others had never even heard of IPSF. From our conversations, I believe I learnt as much from them as they did from me. It was fantastic learning about the other islands and cultures of Indonesia.

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