Bulgaria: There will be Bankruptcies in Pharmacies due to Electricity Prices
Bankruptcy of pharmacies is imminent due to high electricity prices. Anton Valev, chairman of the National Pharmacy Chamber, warned about this on the Bulgarian National Radio.
The prices of medicines are regulated by the state and have a ceiling, and energy costs have increased dramatically, he explained.
“If we are a free business, which the pharmacy industry is not, we could calculate the price increase in the price of the final product. With drugs, we can't do it, it means we have to shrink something. What we will shrink - we will start shrinking wages and at some point, some people will fall off.”
Practically no one issues prescriptions for Covid patients, the discharge regime is null and void, said Anton Valev.
"It's made in such a way that almost no one wants to deal with it. Resistance from fellow physicians to see patients in live conditions in general continues. So I wonder how a doctor can prescribe medicine for a patient he/she hasn't seen.
"You can't treat every single patient according to one protocol and have three medicines to be offered to everyone," Valev said.
Pharmacies already have sparse coronavirus tests available, he said.
Periodically at the end of one calendar year and at the beginning of the next, we have a shortage of certain drugs, which in most cases is due to inadequate planning of medical representatives of the manufacturers themselves, said Anton Valev on BNR.
"Very often patients focus on exactly one specific package and decide that this is the only medicine and there is nothing else to replace it. Pharmacists should come to the rescue, especially the legislation that has legalized the situation we have long requested, in which, in the presence of a generic substitute, the pharmacist can give you what will work, and not the specific trade name, which is prescribed by a doctor."
Valev appealed "to stop bowing to specific brands" and explained that there is a lobbying text in one of the regulations, which now prevents this.
We have enough generic substitutes on the market, he assured.
Regarding the shortage of Pulmicort, Valev clarified that because of the coronavirus, doctors have started prescribing it en masse and beyond its prescriptions for children and premature babies, it is also prescribed to adults, which has led to excessive demand and rapid depletion.
"However, this is not just happening in Bulgaria, this is happening all over the world."
Several thousand packages are received for the whole country, which is absolutely insufficient, added the master pharmacist.
And now there is a problem with anticoagulants, said Anton Valev.
"There are some quantities that, when they enter, are immediately withdrawn to the hospital market and this leaves nothing for the free market. The case is with the total quantities entering the country. "
The over-prescribing of antibiotics was hysteria, the specialist is categorical. According to him, this period is over.
/BNR