What drives outspoken pharmacist Kyro Maseh

How long have you been on social media and using the traditional media to talk about issues affecting healthcare? I’ve been vocal about a variety of different issues that I’ve felt strongly about since I started working as a pharmacist. The first was the opioid crisis and the necessity to combat opioid abuse before it begins, in the youth. In 2013, shortly after I became a licenced pharmacist, I had a patient who came to me and was crying because her son overdosed that morning. And she’s a good lady, her son is a good man, and there was no common sense in the whole story—it just made no sense to me. So I started an initiative to educate students, called #endthecrisis—that I still do—where I was going around schools, talking to them. And I spoke in the media several times about it. The way I was brought up, I see a problem, I act. I don’t wait for someone to provide leadership, I just kind of deal with crises as they happen. What in your childhood taught you to act in times of crisis? I grew up on a farm in Egypt. We lived in a house surrounded by fields, and I remember one day my dad looked out and he saw smoke coming from our neighbour’s house. And all of a sudden, he started running. He picked up his two buckets and a hose and started running towards his house, and then I saw other villagers, and they’ve all got buckets of water, and they’re running towards his house too. And the fire got bigger, and everyone is doing their best to put it out, and they finally put it out. My mother—it was the exact same thing—if she had a friend in trouble, heard that someone got sick, she was at their house, giving financial assistance, making food, you name it. We’re in a society [in Canada] that is just so privileged. Let’s wait for the police, let’s wait for an ambulance. Such a thing doesn’t exist there. If you’re going to wait for an ambulance, it’s coming in six or seven hours. So you have to take matters into your own hands. I did my university in Cairo, and I saw it there too. There is no trust in the government there, there is no trust in the “system.” People just have to help each other out. If someone gets hurt, there are people on the street helping that person, getting him up, driving him to the hospital. My family is Coptic, so in our own church community here [in Toronto], we kind of have our own little hub where we continue to do this. So this has all been ingrained in me, to some degree. Do you feel more pharmacists should advocate for changes they would like to see? I think there are a lot of pharmacists that are already doing good work, like Kristen Watt. There’s a lot of people doing great work. But I feel that if you want your message to have value, it can’t just be a complaint. I hate it when doctors and pharmacists cry and mope about problems without really devising a plan or a solution. I used to be like this, and then, well, I woke up and decided not to be. What was the moment when that changed? For me, it was when the pandemic hit. I remember everything going on lockdown, and I kissed my two kids and wife, and got in the car, and headed to the pharmacy, and the roads were empty, and it was just me. And then I started getting all these emails—my favourite was the college of pharmacists, telling me some encouraging words, and then at the end, they said, for the safety of our employees, we will be working from home. And I thought, wow. Nobody really gives a shit. So it became every person for themselves. I took matters into my own hands, and I started having plexiglass installed and speaking up against business as usual practices that were happening. For me, it was like, I have a good idea, I share it, and then other people say you know what, that’s not such a bad idea, I should do it too. And I’m not here to collect royalties or something—I’m just happy that you’re safe too. Where do you get your information from? Do you have favourite sources? If we’re talking about infectious disease data, there are quite a few people who I follow wholeheartedly: Michael Mina, an epidemiologist who was from Harvard, Jennifer Kwan, obviously. But I also take a lot of time to reflect on the stories and situations that I see in my day to day as well. If you're looking at the patients and the experiences that you see through your day to day as just numbers, you’re going to have a lot of problems, and one really obvious one is that you’re going to learn nothing. You have to really focus on the people that come to you for help, put yourself in their shoes, and have their challenges inspire you to do better. How do you feel about having a higher profile now? A lot of people come up to me and recognize me - there’s people saying hi to me in the street, in the neighbourhood, now. I went to get an MRI, and the MRI technician was asking me, ‘Oh are you the guy that’s always in the news’? I don’t really see it that way—it’s more, if you want an opinion, I’m very opinionated, and I’ll give you my opinion. And I feel strongly about certain things, and I choose to act on them. It’s like a 1+1 equation for me - there is a problem, I’m going to try and fix it. My wife does a great job keeping me humble - she looks at my TV interviews and critiques them and makes fun of them. At the end of the day, her opinion is the only one that matters, and I love her - and that’s it.

What drives outspoken pharmacist Kyro Maseh

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