Written By: Eeva Teräsalmi
August 17, 2022
Health illiteracy is a big problem among immigrant populations due to language barriers and, sometimes, a low education level. Imagine yourself going to a pharmacy in a country where you do not understand the language printed on the packages, in window displays, above shelves and spoken by the friendly pharmacist. There you stand with your prescription and maybe, or maybe not, you will get your medicines. It can happen that the pharmacist is not able to dispense your prescription because it was written in the country you came from rather than the country you are in. You try to understand the advice given to you through pictograms or gestures. But medicines and illnesses are not easy discussion topics and the information might be totally misunderstood. The risk of some kind of error is great. What can be done? In my opinion, we should solve the problem of patient information at the international level such that in every package there should be a QR-code that leads the user to a database where the package texts are available in the language of every country where the active pharmaceutical ingredient is sold. I well understand that there are legislative barriers to do with sales permissions and what information can be accepted by countries but I am also sure that this could be solved at the international level through a coalition of the drug industry, the World Health Organization, the International Pharmaceutical Federation and bodies such as the Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations. There are many health illiteracy issues that must be tackled but the issue of package information is a top priority. During humanitarian crises the problem of foreign-language packages is especially easy to understand — if immigrants cannot read the package or package inserts, these become waste and cause more costs than cure. So, let’s start to work on solving the problem today!