Health Minister Godfrey Farrugia has told Parliament that the situation of out-of-stock medicines had improved from the average of 130 he inherited on the change of government to under 40.

He also said the Pharmacy of Your Choice (POYC) customer care service received an average of 180 calls a day about out-of-stock medicines, which was just 0.16 per cent of the 118,000 or so patients on Schedule V. This meant a performance of 95 per cent efficiency.

He was answering a series of supplementary questions by Opposition health spokesman Claudio Grech and a number of government MPs.

Dr Farrugia rebutted media claims that some POYC customers were receiving preferential treatment over others in the supply of medicines. It was not true that medicines were delivered with particular patients’ names on them.

When Mr Grech observed that the government had issued no rebuttal of the claims, Dr Farrugia said the rebuttal had been issued immediately but the paper concerned had had some “technical” problems.

He said he had been informed that the government’s rebuttal would be published.

The minister said the previous administration had repeatedly reduced the vote for medicines even though the population was ageing steadily. The vote had been cut by €16 million in 2010 and by a further two per cent in 2011. The present government had had to inject ­€9 million more to bridge part of the gap in the running deficit.

Dr Farrugia said one major challenge facing the Department of Health was to amass more realistic information on use of medicines to make it more predictable for streamlining purposes. The government was pushing for quarterly deliveries of the most widely used medicines on a pay-per-use basis.

The government last year spent €87,135,507 on medicines.

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