[jlg23]

[on the risks of self-medication]

I currently live in the Maghreb and the situation is here as it was described for Saudi Arabia. An important difference to Western countries is that pharmacists seem to play a much more important role here: I have to justify every purchase (even for very common broad spectrum antibiotics) and locals tell me they regularly seek advice at the local pharmacy first. Think "doctor's appointment pre-screening". And my highly subjective impression is that the quality of this pre-screening surpasses service in western pharmacies by far.

Though, the problems you point out are very real, just mitigated by the different situation.

Another thing that makes the situation incomparable to western countries is the low density of qualified doctors: If you need psychotropics here in my village you would have to move several hours away into the next big city to do a therapy. So it is: diagnosis, prescription and off you go. One can go on with a single prescription for years and I dare to say that the debate on whether this is good or bad here is still open.