Clinics vs. Pharmacies, Uap: “Protections or we will feel free to sell medicines”

The National Union of Outpatient Clinics, Polyclinics, Institutions and Private Hospitals “Uap calls for adequate protection for true local medicine, to provide a 360-degree service. Otherwise, it will be considered free to market drugs within the same health facilities and to adopt the same procedures required of pharmacies”. The reality “representative of all 18 trade associations of over 95 thousand health facilities present in the territory, through outpatient clinics, polyclinics, authorized private hospitals and religious hospitals”, returns to the attack on the occasion of the meeting of the Farmacieunite held in Emilia Romagna, an occasion in which “the pharmaceutical lobby – writes the Uap in a note – managed to obtain the allocation of funds to pharmacies to provide health services, taking them away from authorized private health facilities and private contracted facilities, which constitute the true local health”.

“The paradox we are witnessing – reiterates the Uap – is precisely that of seeing funds being allocated to structures that possess a mere municipal authorization to market products, but which lack the 420 requirements required by Legislative Decree no. 502/1992 to protect citizens’ health. It is clear – it reads – the failure to respect the principle of equality constitutionally established in art. 3, which on the one hand allows pharmacies to provide health services without possessing the requirements required of clinics, authorized private and authorized contracted polyclinics, clinics and public and private authorized hospitals, in total violation of Legislative Decree no. 502/1992 and the Royal Decree of 1934, and on the other does not authorize the latter to sell drugs. This operating method of the Government makes us think that not all of us have full freedom, but that we are in the Wild West, where what is guaranteed is not the health of citizens, but the possibility of economic gains”.