“Your health is our duty, our commitment, our life's work”: Pharmacists in South Africa claim new ground

Abstract

Abstract Against a background of transformation of health care services and a shift towards Primary Health Care, this article aims to present, discuss and analyse the changes that have taken place in Community Pharmacy (CP) in South Africa. Particular emphasis is placed on the concurrent shifts from the dominant focus on disease and illness to that of health, and from the exclusive reliance on Allopathic Medicine (AM) to an incorporation of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and in some cases traditional/indigenous medicine. The analysis is based on official documentation, two surveys of community pharmacies in Johannesburg, as well as interviews with key informants. The main argument is that in its efforts to change its own role definition, CP is responding to demands from the public as well as to economic and professional opportunities presented. In the process, it is becoming a place for health rather than disease, incorporating lay and complementary healing systems by working with other marginal health professions such as nurses and CAM healers, with a view to generating economic rewards within a holistic framework. The article highlights the main changes and demonstrates how they converge with similar factors to those of the growth of CAM and the rise of the new public health. Concepts such as ‘the healthism movement’, ‘culture of fitness’, ‘consumerism’, ‘medical dominance’ and ‘professional boundaries and jurisdictions’ are invoked in the course of the discussion in order to explain the current developments as well as to point the direction in which community pharmacy in South Africa is likely to develop.