Pharmacies not regularly translating labels for Latinos
Kristi King, WTOP.com, May 29, 2009
A new study finds that 44 percent of pharmacies in counties where more than a quarter of the population is Latino don't translate medicine labels and information into Spanish.
Northwestern University conducted a survey of pharmacies across four states.
"It's a major, major concern," says Stacy Bailey, a clinical research associate with Northwestern. Bailey says many chain pharmacies use software that can translate the information, but pharmacists don't know how to use the software.
"They {Pharmacists} themselves can't read it," Bailey says. "How can they verify that what they are putting on the label is accurate and correct?"
Bailey says the university has conducted studies showing that English-speaking people have difficulty understanding how to take their medication based on English instructions.
"So you can imagine for a person who doesn't even speak English; getting an English instruction is that much more difficult to understand."
One city is taking action. New York City Council is considering legislation that would require all chain pharmacies to council patients in a patient's native language, and well was translate all labels.
"They just weren't using the technology," says Nisha Agerwal, Director of Health Justice Program for the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
There has been no timetable set for the legislation.
When it comes to one's health, we need to be our own advocate. Besides getting the correct diagnoses and treatment, why should we depend on outside sources to tell us how to take our medicine? I've been blessed that all the medication I've taken in my lifetime was to be taken so many times a day or for pain. With or without food and the labels would read that the medication will make me drowsy, nervous and that I shouldn’t operate heavy machinery while taking said medication.
ReplyDeleteMandating chain pharmacies or hospitals to print bilingual labels and counsel the patients in their native language is a cost that the rest of us will have to pay when the pharmacies raise their product's cost.
A cost I'm not willing to accept silently.