Filenews 5 September 2024 - by Marilena Panayi
On the backs of patients, a long-standing problem is finally transferred and despite the efforts made from time to time, it never reaches a definitive solution.
The opening hours of private pharmacies, whether they should be extended or remain as they are, as well as the way in which services are offered to patients, come back to the fore and, if a solution is not provided, to the problem that arose due to the disagreement recorded between pharmacists, patients from the 1st October will not have a pharmacy at their disposal to secure their medicines if the need arises during non-working hours and days.
This is because, as officially announced by the Pancyprian Pharmaceutical Association, pharmacists will abstain from the day and overnight program, protesting against the delay, which they claim, is observed in the issuance of a decision by the Court on their opening hours.
"The issue concerning the opening hours of pharmacies," explained the president of the Pancyprian Pharmaceutical Association, Plutarchos Georgiades, "has been pending for years and arose when some pharmacists decided to demand a change in the existing opening hours, which is applied on the basis of a decree issued by the Minister of Health."
These pharmacists appealed to the Court seeking the repeal of the ministerial decree, citing the opening hours of other shops.
It is reminded that private pharmacies operate daily (for the summer season) from 8:00-8:30 in the morning until 7:30 in the evening with interruption from 1:30 to 4. On-call duty during the summer season lasts from 7:30 in the morning until 11 in the evening. For the winter season the opening hours are from 8:00 to 8:30 in the morning until 1:30 and from 3 to 6:30. On-call duty runs from 7:30 to 10 p.m. Both during summer and summer hours, the pharmacist on duty serves emergencies on call 24 hours a day.
The seven pharmacists who appealed to the Court essentially asked for an extension of their opening hours and the Court, before which the case has been pending for two years, issued an interim decision exempting them from the provisions of the decree in force, thus giving them the right to operate their pharmacies at hours and days beyond those foreseen. from the official pharmacy hours, hours and days.
This, as the president of the PPS said, "results in seeing the phenomenon of two pharmacies being on the same street and having a distance of a few meters from each other but operating with two different hours. At the same time, the pharmacy that secured the interim decision also operates during the hours when another pharmacy stays overnight or stays, with the result that the pharmacy on duty loses its revenue, since in essence patients are covered by the one that does not operate according to the specified hours".
This phenomenon, Mr. Georgiadis said, "has recently led to illegal phenomena since some colleagues, who do not belong to the category of those who secured the interim court decision, operate continuously despite the fact that they are not entitled to do so."
All this situation "has forced us to take the decision to abstain from the on-call schedule (day and night) until the final decision is issued by the Court and a solution is given to the problem of working hours."
For the PPC, he said, "the working hours as determined by the decree and applied for decades, are the most ideal for patients who can at any time be informed about which pharmacy operates in their area and contact it when necessary."
Following the announcement of the pharmacists' decision, the Director of Pharmaceutical Services, Elena Panagiotopoulou, convened an emergency meeting of the Pharmacy Council, which is responsible for studying the issue.
As Mrs. Panagiotopoulou pointed out to "F", "the Ministry of Health and the Pharmaceutical Services are concerned since our concern is the uninterrupted service of patients". Of course, she added, "we all understand that when a case is pending in court there is not much room for intervention."
The decision of pharmacists caused great concern among organized patients, with the president of the Federation of Cyprus Patients' Associations, Charalambos Papadopoulos, telling "F" that "all competent bodies must finally settle this issue because if from October 1st the PPC implements the measure it has announced, those who will pay the price will be the patients. We can't think about what will happen if one night, a person needs medicine and there is no pharmacy open to serve him."
