I am writing this letter as information to the public who are being taken for a ride by their lack of understanding and to the powers-that-be for their lack of enforcement.

I have been practising medicine for the last 25 years. A now a dangerous trend, nay a disease, has set into our society. It is called 'self-medication'.

This trend has been prescribed by consumer groups for cheaper treatment alternatives, but it has gone wrong, and the people who are suffering are the less educated and less informed public.

Self-medication has become so rampant in our country that the selling of medicines, of all types and denominations, takes place over the counter of the pharmacy without a prescription.

The pharmacist, who has no formal training in diagnosis and treatment, sells medicines to unsuspecting patients, who wind up with problems associated with mis-diagnosis and mistreatment.

Scheduled poisons like antibiotics, anti-hypertensives, anti-diabetics, and steroids need close monitoring by a trained doctor.

I am amazed how easy it is to buy prescription drugs over the counter in this country. One only needs a sample of the medication one is on, or its name, to be able to purchase it over the counter.

I have patients who send minors, as young as 10 and 12 years to buy medicines with only a sample of the tablets their parents or grandparents are taking. If cigarettes can't be sold to minors, why are we allowing potentially dangerous medicines to be sold to them?

Every year, doctors attend seminars and talks given by experts, both local and foreign, to update their knowledge on how to treat various diseases, especially diabetes, hypertension, asthma and heart disease which are so prevalent in our society.

If treating these diseases were as simple as just dispensing medicines over the counter without even a check-up, a blood analysis, an X-ray or other investigations, then any Tom, Dick or Harry could treat. What would be the point of licensed medical practitioners?

Over the last 10 years the number of diabetic patients I have personally sent to hospitals for leg amputations because of poor self-medication has quadrupled.

Similarly, the number of stroke patients has also increased. As have kidney failure patients and patients with severe side effects from the misuse of steroids - given by pharmacists as a quick fix for every thing from an itch to asthma to painful joints!

The sad victims of this kind of treatment, or mistreatment as it were, are the poor kampung and rural folk.

Potent steroid creams which have grave consequences if used for prolonged periods of time are dispensed over the counter for all the wrong reasons. The result? Adults and children with permanently damaged skins.

It seems that every rash is either a fungal infection or an allergy. Why were textbooks on diseases ever written if everything was so simple?

Repeated complaints by the relevant medical bodies have brought no positive results. The government will only act when some great tragedy occurs. There is absolutely no enforcement. Even Viagra is sold like sweets.

The government will ultimately find itself spending more on all the renal failures and stroke victims if some drastic measures are not taken to make diagnosis and treatment the domain of trained doctors and not a free-for-all.

This is a typical case of wanting to be a developed nation, whilst retaining a developing nation's mentality.