Media Information / Media Kit

Chris Waller, pharmacist/owner of family-operated Lakeside Medicine Centre Pharmacy in Kelowna, B.C., has been elected president of the BC Pharmacy Association's Board of Directors for 2018/19, beginning September 1. Keith Shaw, Regional Pharmacy Manager with Sobeys based in Chilliwack, has been elected vice-president. Alex Dar Santos, associate-owner of Shoppers Drug Mart in Richmond, returns as past president.

More than 30,000 British Columbians have been impacted by Health Canada’s July 9 recall of valsartan, a generic cardiovascular drug, because of concerns around an impurity in the drug.  The impurity was identified as N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a potential human carcinogen. In British Columbia, Pharmacare is advising pharmacies to use their standard corporate recall processes to identify and inform patients who currently have a supply of any of the affected lot numbers or DINs. Patients should be requested to replace their existing supply as soon as possible.

March 7, 2018 - Derek Desrosiers will be retiring from his position as Director of Pharmacy Practice Support at the end of May 2018. Well-known in community pharmacy not only in British Columbia, but across Canada, Desrosiers has been a frontline pharmacist, pharmacy manager, worked in the wholesale and banner part of the pharmacy business, and has served as the president of the BC Pharmacy Association (BCPhA) six times. He has been a director and president of the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy and has worked for the Association twice, most recently coming four years ago to take his current...

March highlights work of everyday community pharmacists March 7, 2018 – While 2017 was marked as the worst year yet in B.C.’s overdose crisis, B.C.’s community pharmacists continue to step in to help patients tackle critical health issues including opioid addiction. Across the province, community pharmacists are on the frontline to help deliver health care for British Columbians. The month of March marks Pharmacist Awareness Month (PAM), in which the BC Pharmacy Association lets British Columbians know about the role pharmacists play in important health-care delivery - from managing opioid...

Michael Ortynsky remembers the day when he made the decision to follow in the footsteps of his father and headed north to begin his career in pharmacy. Based in the “energetic city” of Fort St. John, Michael learned to love rural life. So much so that over the past 35 years, he opened pharmacies throughout rural parts of the province – Keremeos, Tumbler Ridge and West Kelowna.