Malta is fortunate to have a long and distinguished tradition of medical training and support. A vital part of the medical service infrastructure is provided by well-trained and professional pharmacists who qualify for their warrant to practice after several years of training.

We tend to take our pharmacists for granted. But they fulfil a multiplicity of roles and responsibilities. These range from dispensing prescriptions made out by doctors, to communicating with the medical prescriber if a prescription is unclear or even potentially harmful to a patient. Their key responsibility is ensuring a patient’s safety and well-being.

It also includes counselling patients about any potentially adverse reactions and interactions with other medicines, food, alcohol or other beverages. Counselling includes training patients how and when to take doses and following up with patients to see if medications are working. Pharmacists also work with patients on general health, helping them to heal and avoid becoming sick by sharing advice on non-prescription remedies.

There has in the past been a tendency for some pharmacists to dispense medicines without asking for a doctor’s prescription, even though, to be strictly correct, one should have been produced.

But now, since it became mandatory under EU law for pharmacists to take out indemnity insurance to protect themselves against a patient filing a claim against them for wrongful treatment, many pharmacists are no longer willing to take the risk of selling a prescription-only medicine without one.

The insurance cover requirement is part of an EU directive on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare. Medicinal products are classified as prescription-only or non-prescription (‘over the counter’) on the basis of a number of criteria during the testing and registration process. The classification is legally binding.

The stricter adherence to the need to produce a doctor’s prescription will require greater education of people. It will also mean that certain medicines, such as paracetamol-based Calpol for children, which were previously bought without a doctor’s prescription – although this should not have been allowed – will now lead to pharmacists demanding one.

It will also mean that patients on long-term medical treatment, such as those buying tablets to control cholesterol, high blood pressure or asthma, will have to renew their prescriptions every six months. This will entail visiting the doctor and renewing the prescription, with the extra expense this may bring.

Is this the nanny State further intruding on people’s lives, or is it, as the Chamber of Pharmacists put it, “a greater awareness of pharmacovigilance duties in reducing the adverse events of all medicines, to the benefit of patients’ health”?

The answer is that, depending on how the prescription regime is applied, it is a little bit of both. The obligation placed on all 28 EU countries to make all pharmacists take out indemnity insurance smacks of the nanny State. But, on the other hand, if this leads – as it has – to pharmacists no longer taking the risk of selling medicine without a proper prescription for them (thus potentially saving patients from harming themselves), then this surely is a good thing.

The real judgment to be made is the medical one: should prescriptions, for example for Calpol, Actifed or antibiotics, be issued so readily and should a medicine be obtainable only on prescription in the first place? These are issues for the Medicines Authority, not pharmacists. It is for pharmacists to follow the law.