Shopper's Drug Mart is engaging in the "unethical" "poaching" of pharmacists and pharmacists-in-training from South Africa, asserts an editorial released Monday by the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
In a piece titled "Amir Attaran, Roderick B. Walker and the CMAJ editorial writing team call for an immediate end to the aggressive recruitment of pharmacists from South Africa, so that these health workers can remain in their country, which is being devastated by the AIDS epidemic.
An estimated 19 per cent of adult South Africans are HIV-positive, the editorial contends, adding that reports from the country suggest that hospital patients often wait several days just to have a prescription filled.
"In the worst-hit provinces, such as KwaZulu-Natal, hundreds of new pharmacists are needed to dispense AIDS drugs, but recently three-quarters of the slots for government pharmacists stood vacant," the editorial reads.
The authors say Shoppers Drug Mart -- known as Pharmaprix in Quebec -- is worsening the problem by actively luring pharmacists from South Africa with promises of six-figure salaries -- a practice it calls "poaching."
The editorial reads: "Shoppers Drug Mart is not ashamed of this recruiting; actually, it is proud of it. Its website brags: 'We have a long history of helping Pharmacists from other countries start a new career in Canada.'
"This behaviour is not just gauche; it is unethical. It amounts to a Canadian corporation taking a free ride on South African taxpayers and the impoverished higher education system -- truly foreign aid in reverse," the editorial reads.
The authors say that if Shoppers Drug Mart needs workers, it should instead be contributing to training by subsidizing studentships at Canadian or South African schools of pharmacy.
Such a proposal would benefit everyone, the authors maintain: pharmacy schools would expand their intake through subsidized studentships; Shoppers Drug Mart would get the well-trained pharmacists it needs, and South African pharmacists would be able to stay home and care for their own countrymen.
The editorial notes that "almost certainly, Shoppers Drug Mart is not the only pharmacy chain that poaches." But, it says, as Canada's leading pharmacy chain, "Shoppers Drug Mart is uniquely placed to raise the industry's subterranean ethical bar on poaching."
The editorial is being released on the same day as the start of a planned Shopper's-led recruitment visit to Pretoria, Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
With World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 just a few days away, the CMAJ says Canadian consumers, governments and hospitals "should show solidarity for South Africa, and take their business elsewhere."
