Over-the-counter medicines in Thailand, isn't that life-threatening?

A (Thai) friend of my wife has suffered irreversible liver damage because she has taken too much paracetamol for too long. She started doing this in Thailand, nobody had ever told her that you can take a maximum of 4 grams of paracetamol per day, and preferably not for too long unless prescribed by a doctor.

When I buy medicines in Pattaya, the box always contains a leaflet. Mostly in TH and in English . Now you can find the information leaflet for all medicines on the internet. Type in the medicine and ask for the package insert.

Now a lot of heavy medicines in TH are also only available through the hospital. The over the counter drugs are more of the everyday types.
Now when I go to the doctor in Belgium, he almost never asks about allergies when he prescribes a medicine.

My opinion on medicine and care is that you should think for yourself. If you are allergic to certain substances, a doctor cannot just know immediately.

No one knows your body better than you.

You can find leaflets on the internet.

A lot of information about medicines can be found on Healthline.com – in English.

Oh, and 17 to 20 thousand deaths a year from converted drug use? In my opinion that is not true. It will be around 1 thousand. Still too much of course.

Well, in Thailand a pharmacist is just a salesman who wants to sell his product (often/sometimes without any medical training). Today he sells medicine and maybe tomorrow noodles. Although there will certainly also be “serious pharmacists” among them. It is even worse in India/Bangladesh, where medicines are often sold that are sometimes already 20 years old (especially in remote areas).

Dear Benny,
It is true that prices for medicines can differ between pharmacies and also between hospitals. My experience with Lantus insulin: hospital 3800 Baht, pharmacy 4400 Baht. Betmiga hospital 1200 Baht, pharmacy 1430 Baht.
But there are much bigger problems:
1. The professionalism of the pharmacist sometimes leaves much to be desired. I wanted Hydroxocobalamin (Vitamin B12 deficiency) and he told me that Cyanocobalamin is the same and is good too. The latter stuff is hardly used in the western world and belongs in the trash.
2. Because people can freely buy medicines anywhere, the pharmacist cannot monitor whether medicines can be used together. In NL with your regular pharmacy, the pharmacist does.
3. Doctors sometimes tell you only limited information about side effects. For example, last year the internist gave me Dafiro 10/160 and that stuff is to lower blood pressure and he always examined my feet on subsequent visits, but he didn't say why. Now Dafiro contains the substance amlodipine and that is on the list of medicines that have edema as a side effect and indeed I recently have pitting edema and that is why I switched to another medicine.
Living in Thailand, self-examination such as looking up drug data and possible cross-effects is absolutely necessary.
Rembrandt

For what it's worth.
There are indeed restrictions on the sale of medicines in Thailand.
There are a number of drugs that can be addictive.
There, a sale on prescription only is the possibility.
The relevant Pharmacy asks for a prescription and will have to file it.
Usually you get these prescriptions through the hospital, so this is not a problem. However, if you get the prescription from a doctor, the doctor's license (registration) number will be stated on the prescription.

An example here is the drug "Ultracet" (a paracetamol with tramadol addition) to which you can easily become addicted.

Doctors; pharmacists…. and then you have the seers! Last month, a child in the family was hospitalized in Khon Kaen with heart problems. Still spent a week in the hospital and had the necessary medication ... until here nothing abnormal (in our western eyes). Once at home, it was considered important to go to a seer, because taking medicine without a seer having said his say could never be right (according to their Thai view)! They even drove 150 km to a "respected" seer, who came to the conclusion that the child's grandfather was too loud every time he was drunk and that too many trees had recently been cut down in the vicinity of the forest and that because of this the local ghosts lost track and thus continued to wander in the village ... The seer's advice was that one should build a proper track back into the forest so that the ghost would disappear again and the child would get well soon … So the whole family went to work and a decent path was built in the forest …. and sure enough, the child got better quickly….!! Of course I didn't cancel anything here because that would never be accepted with gratitude! So you see… who do people rely on here the most… on the technical/medical advice of a pharmacist/doctor or on the “expert” advice of a seer or a respected monk from the village?? So a seer with some business aptitude can sell some tools, because they buy it anyway if they get such advice!