The Controversial Shift Towards Commercialized Health Services in Pharmacies

«With the upcoming approval of the new Decree on the so-called Pharmacy of Services, the government is about to launch a commercial version of healthcare activities. In practice, a sort of pharmaceutical grand bazaar where, instead of the correct provision of health services, do-it-yourself will be preferred under the supervision of omniscient and jack-of-all-trades pharmacists». This is stated in a note by Vincenzo D'Anna, president of the National Federation of the Orders of Biologists (Fnob), according to whom «pharmacists, despite lacking specific legal competencies in the field, will find themselves, overnight, transformed into know-it-alls. This will result in an increase, less lofty, in their earnings, being evidently well represented, as a category, at the Ministry of Health». 

For D'Anna «if the professional baggage, the quality of the services, and the scientific accuracy have now been set aside to favor a category, that of the pharmacists, particularly protected, meritorious and politically strong, we can only take note but certainly we are not willing to resign. Clinical analyses, in fact, are a matter that requires appropriate technology, structural authorizations, and prepared and competent professionals. Those performed in pharmacies, instead, are self-analyses on capillary blood, carried out in an approximate if not fallacious manner, lacking in quality and reliability». 

In any case, concludes the representative of the Italian Biologists, «we will continue to fight in every forum because under the health aegis, the competencies and rights of all health professions, none excluded, are protected, in the interest of patients. And this is what we will continue to ask the Minister and the Government».