FRONTIERS IN PHARMACY

Honorine  Uwimana is a young pharmacist hailing from Rwanda, she is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Public Health from the University of San Francisco, California.

There is room for pharmacists upstream!

For most of us getting in the medical field, the ultimate goal is to change lives. My excitement was not less when I graduated from Mount Kenya University with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy back in 2017. After rotating from community and clinical pharmacy settings to the industrial pharmacy, I was contracted to work in a retail pharmacy and later on in a wholesale pharmacy. During my time of practice, a couple of questions haunted the exercise of my profession.

What happens to those who do not have the means to get to the nearest pharmacy, or those who can not afford the medications they need for their care?

How much difference am I making in the lives of those who hand to me their prescriptions or confide to me their health worries?

To stress on the latter, obviously, my limited interaction with the patients would not be enough to draw down to the root cause of their health worries.

I took a month off my work, to attend YALI-RLC-EA with all my worries unanswered and with my zeal to move to the frontline unhampered.

YALI-RLC-EA is a round table of thinkers and change-makers and I left it knowing that I need to find my way upstream, I have to venture on the road less traveled, I have to defy the norms, and refuse to be defined within the realms of prescription reading, dispensing, inventory making and side effects monitoring.

There is more to being a pharmacist, pharmacists believe and prioritize health before healthcare, and prioritizing health means moving upstream where systems and structures influence health outcomes.

With that in mind, I thought of engaging with Humanitarian organizations, while sharpening my own pharmaceutical skills, knowledge, and opportunities to meet my passion for health equity.

It started with applying for jobs in local and continental organs.

We all know the rhythm; you need a master’s degree or five years of experience. My résumé was not that heavy on degrees and work experiences yet, nevertheless, there was something inside me heavy on changing health structures in East Africa, and it could not wait.

I narrowed down from applying for jobs to considering volunteering opportunities, after a  couple of months of no replies and rejections, I got my stroke of luck to volunteer with social justice ministries located in California, with a concentration on health equity.

For a year and a half I focused on senior care in a Memory Care unit, the geographical shift came also with a shift in terms of Community Health concerns. With an aging population growing at a fast pace in the USA, my focus shifted from Non-Communicable diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension, Heart diseases and Pain management that I would deal with in Rwanda to Neurodegenerative Disorders coupled with other co-morbidities. Beyond that, I enjoyed the holistic approach to health that the organization I was volunteering with, put forward.

Having a platform where the focus is not only on the medicine and its dosage but also on political, social, and environmental factors that affect the patient was exactly what I was looking for, my paradigm shifted from interpreting symptoms to understanding and addressing causes.

My career was curving upstream, I served with projects that deal with food security and health in the Bay Area, California, with homeless and domestic violence shelters in South California, with organizations giving a voice and a community to people with intellectual disabilities such as L’ Arche Wave crest international, and today I have gone back to school to pursue my degree of Master’s in Public health with concentration on Community and Public Health Practice(CPHP) at the University of San Francisco.

Every day spots the light on fissures in Health Structures and Healthcare Systems, and today more than ever with COVID-19, our pharmacy profession is calling us to go upstream where problems start rather than standing where symptoms spark.

Today more than ever I enjoy being a Pharmacist, I am currently studying and analyzing the issue of Opioids Overdose deaths in California, coupling my Pharmaceutical skills with community factors driving overdose deaths up, brings me joy and puts a significant cap on my choice.

Here I am, transforming my Pharmaceutical knowledge and passion into long-term community solutions. Yes, pharmacists should roam upstream.

The world’s our oyster!

Happy New Year!!

PHARMACIST HONORINE UWIMANA