Health Minister Godfrey Farrugia has recently launched a White Paper on the procurement of medicines by the government, their storage, and distribution in the Pharmacy of Your Choice Scheme. The document is entitled "Ensuring your rights to entitlement medicines at the time you require them."
The document seeks to tackle endemic problems which hurt people, many of whom are in vulnerable situations. One augurs that the White Paper will create an enlightened and intelligent enough debate which will truly help the authorities to adopt policies and systems that will eventually solve the problems caused when medicines are out of stock.
Due to a defective registration system patients are sometimes told that medicines are out of stock when in fact they are in stock. This results both in frustrated patients as well as medicine waste. The stock of medicines that is destroyed by the health authorities as they were not used by their ‘use by’ date is scandalous. This malpractice can only be eliminated if a good IT system is put in place.
The electronic card that the Minister is proposing should enable government to control another type of abuse of the system. I had commented on a report published in The Malta Independent on Sunday of January 6, 2008. This report reveals another instance of how creative the Maltese can be. Let me reproduce a couple of paragraphs.
“There was a person, for instance, who regularly got eight half litre bottles of a particular lactulose (purgative) which, had he taken them, would have incapacitated him permanently and worse! It was discovered that this medicine is very good for horses.
Another case regarded a particular medicine for gout. Judging by the quantities given out, it seemed that half the population of Malta suffered from gout – until somebody discovered that this medicine makes dogs’ hair shiny.”
It is incredible but true; funny but not funny – you know what I mean.
The White Paper rightly refers to medicines that one is entitled to. I would like to widen the debate to include medicines that one should or should not be entitled to.
The present system regales free medicines to many who can easily afford to buy them. It is not right, I believe, to give medicines free of charge to those who will not suffer in any way if they have to pay for them. Free medicines should be available only to those who cannot afford them. The money saved should then go towards the financing of expensive medicines or toward inexpensive medicines which, in particular cases cannot be bought by some people.
Government monies should be spent only on those who need this help.