The president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia has called on community pharmacists to diagnose, treat and take long-term responsibility for patients with chronic diseases who slip through the cracks.

“People are walking around with hypertension, dyslipidaemia, non-insulin dependent diabetes and they don’t know they’ve got it,” Professor Trent Twomey told the Pharmacy Connect conference in Sydney this week.

“So, not only is there a large opportunity for community pharmacy to not just screen, but to diagnose and treat, and take responsibility for that large volume of Australians that have these chronic diseases and are blissfully unaware that they have them. 

According to the Australian Journal of Pharmacy, Professor Twomey said he recognised that pharmacists generally had a “larger appetite for the acutes”.