The Health Department this morning denied favouring patients according to their political allegiance.
Opposition leader Simon Busuttil yesterday evening claimed it was "scandalous" that the Labour government was favouring one patient over another in the pharmacy of your choice system.
He said that the government through the ministry and the POYC office was sending medicines to specific people according to their political allegiance.
But the department this morning said it was shameful how the Opposition leader, contrary to what his health spokesman MP Claudio Grech always insisted, was using health for partisan purposes.
Dr Busuttil was speaking in Mosta at the first of a series of outdoor political activities in various localities in the run-up to the MEP elections on May 24. He said that when the PL was in opposition it had criticised the problem of out-of-stock medicines but, one year after it was elected to government, the situation became worse.
The Labour government had also created a new problem as, through the ministry and the POYC office, it was sending medicines to specific people according to their political allegiance.
"This is not only discrimination against Nationalists, but also against Labourites. Only those Labourites who were part of the party's core were being favoured... we have a government that should be ashamed of itself," he said.
He called on voters to send a clear message that this was not acceptable when they cast their vote at the MEP elections.
The subject was raised earlier by pharmacist Denise Ellul who said that last November she noticed that there were cases where the POYC office was sending medicines to specific patients.
She immediately called the ministry to note that this was not fair and that it was unethical to favour one patient over another. Her colleagues confirmed that they too had noticed this - a situation also acknowledged by the Chamber of Pharmacists.
She said the out-of-stock situation had not improved since a year ago. Medicines that could be purchased were also going out-of-stock and some people were taking a single pill instead of two to save on their pills. Apart from that, the workload for pharmacists had increased as patients went to them more regularly to ask if their medicines had arrived.
Dr Busuttil stressed that it was important to vote and asked people to question whether they felt betrayed on the issue of meritocracy and on not being provided with medicines they were entitled to.
He said this campaign was not easy for the PN, which had limited funds and given that it came after an electoral defeat. "But the PN will not give up," he said.
"We will not give up because our work is heartfelt... and we will work to gain the people's trust as, in that way, we shall have a better Malta," he said.