22 May 2014 – A total of 85 people attended a talk entitled ‘Management of Tuberculosis’ at Lecture Theatre 1 in International Medical University (IMU)’s Bukit Jalil Campus. The participants consist of registered pharmacists, medical doctors and pharmacy and medical students. This talk is organised by the Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society – Young Pharmacist Chapter (MPS-YPC) and IMU Alumni.
The honorary speaker for this talk was Ms Rahela Ambaras Khan. She is a registered pharmacist in Malaysia, currently working as the clinical pharmacist, specialising in critical care and infectious disease in Hospital Sungai Buloh. She has obtained her Masters in Clinical Pharmacy (UKM) in 2009 and US Board of Pharmacy Specialty Pharmacotherapy) in 2013, and going to pursue her PhD in September this year. She had undergone a short-term critical re-pharmacy attachment at Alfred Hospital, Melbourne. She has vast experience in management of critical care or ICU and infectious disease. Ms Rahela is actively involved in many national level committees, such as Antibiotic Committee, Critical Care(Pharmacy) committee, Development Group National Clinical Practice Guideline Tuberculosis, Secretary sub-committee(anti-infective) of Ministry of Health Formulary and Editorial Committee of National Antibiotic Guideline. In this talk, Ms Rahela emphasised on the maximum dosage of anti-TB drugs that can be prescribed to patients as they are potent drugs that have a lot of side effects. She also highlighted that rifampicin can cause thrombocytopenia in patients during the treatment. There was a Questions and Answers session for the participants to clear their doubts at the end of the talk. Before Ms Rahela concluded the talk, she reminded the pharmacists about the drug interactions that could take place between the anti-TB drugs and other drugs. She also advised them on the personal protective measures as the percentage of healthcare providers infected with tuberculosis is increasing. One of the IMU alumni asked about the talk and currently a pharmacist in Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah thinks that the talk is quite informative and related to her current practice. A Semester 4 Pharmacy student of IMU was enlightened by all the new knowledge that was delivered during the talk and he would be interested to join such a talk again.
