A fellow of mine who was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and he was getting Procodyl prescribed because codeine is controlled substance in Thailand. Now that he's here he's been getting a substance call Makatussin given to him from the pharmacists but they mentioned that it isnt a prescription drug in Switzerland (well Basel atleast).
So is medication with codeine just given over the counter here? isnt that a bit dangerous as it being an opiate.

I can only recommend your friend see a good general doctor and possibly a specialist. My mum has/had chronic bronchitis after life-threatening pneumonia - and she finally changed doctors under pressure from her two daughters and he put her on treatment plan which involved steriods for about three weeks from quite a high dose, but weaned off quickly, to reduce inflammation, then once they could actually see what was going on properly, he could work out whether there was an underlying infection, asthma or another problem.

End point is that she is much much better now, although we can always tell if she's coming down with a cold because the first thing she does is cough and cough (seriously, I worried she had lung cancer or something)...

The concentration is really not that high, and it's usually (i.e. in most Euro countries) only available from the pharmacist, so not strictly OTC. Very common in various formulations, e.g. Pholcodine, as a cough suppresant, and really you'd need to drink a whole bottle to get any noticeable "high" from it, so it's not considered 'dangerous'.

Other codeine-containing drugs used as painkillers have much higher opiate content, and are usually prescription-only in most countries.