Medicines, especially those intended for the treatment of serious pathologies, must be delivered by the pharmacist or pharmacy, or to the patient's home or public health facilities, certainly not from the van of a postal courier who is unable to comply with all the complex rules that regulate the profession. Federfarma underlines this in a note, reiterating its total and absolute opposition to initiatives aimed at overriding the pharmacy and the pharmacist. Minister Fazio, continues the press release, declared that the personnel dedicated by the Post Office to this service must be suitably trained. So why not use the pharmacy network which has 50,000 graduate professionals who are constantly updated, at no cost, with special courses authorized by the Ministry and which guarantees the safe and controlled delivery of medicines? "I find the initiative promoted by Farmindustria together with Poste Italiane for the home delivery of medicines to be absurd, extremely dangerous and unacceptable for the health of citizens. Until now, for safety reasons and to keep the patient's health under control, they have only been administered in hospitals," says Annarosa Racca, President of Federfarma. "We will fully defend the professionalism of the pharmacist in the face of the very serious attack to which it is subjected".
Sunifar, get ready for the state of turmoil
"We are ready to defend our role with all available tools and have already decided on the state of agitation of rural pharmacies for the protection of public health, the Pharmacy Institute and our fellow collaborators". Even Sunifar, which represents rural pharmacies, in the words of its president Alfredo Orlandi, expresses all its concern for the agreement between Farmindustria and Poste, an agreement which, Orlandi underlines "if effectively implemented, will be able to affect the efficiency and capillarity of the pharmaceutical service. It is a further step towards a situation in which pharmacies have only duties, to stay open at night and on Sundays, have the full range of medicines for emergencies, guarantee new services that require investment and equip themselves to protect patient privacy as much as possible, and then someone else delivers the medicines, only during limited "office hours", concludes President Sunifar
Pharmacist33 – 7 February 2011
