After the doctor examines us and prescribes medicines, we go out to buy bottles from women selling them outside the hospital. We then go to the pharmacy where we get these bottles filled with syrups. If the medicines prescribed are in pill form, the pharmacist wraps them in sheets of paper, which are often unclean.

We had no idea then that these packages were unhealthy. However, we now know that the amount of medicines we used to get those days were exactly what we needed.

When we moved to Egypt later, we discovered that the medicines were sold in ready and tightly closed packages. The role of the pharmacist was just to take the prescribed medicines from the shelves and give them to us. He was only required to decipher the handwriting of the doctors.

When we traveled to the United States, we found that only the required amount of medicines was given in sterilized bottles.

Saudi Arabia later started copying the Egyptian model. Pharmacists sell larger quantities of medicines than the patients actually need.

In a study, Dr. Anas Ashour said more than 95 percent of patients in the Kingdom do not consume the entire amount of medicines sold to them. He, therefore, established a welfare society to collect surplus medicines from people and give them to patients who cannot afford to pay for them.

This of course is a good idea but it seems that Dr. Ashour has no confidence in the ability of pharmacists in the Kingdom to measure the exact amount of medicines needed by patients.