The Pharmacy Of Your Choice scheme has only started being rolled out. And already cases are turning up of people getting free medicine for their horses and their dogs, as well as for their long-dead relatives.

There was a person, for instance, who regularly got eight half litre bottles of a particular lactulose (purgative) which, had he taken them, would have incapacitated him permanently and worse! It was discovered that this medicine is very good for horses.

Another case regarded a particular medicine for gout. Judging by the quantities given out, it seemed that half the population of Malta suffered from gout – until somebody discovered that this medicine makes dogs’ hair shiny.

And there was also a case where a patient, for whom medicines were regularly collected, would be some 110 years old today, until it turned out he has been dead for all of the past 20 years.

Sources in the sector, who spoke to The Malta Independent on Sunday, said however that uncovering such fiddles or messes is not the prime aim of the POYC scheme.

First of all, the scheme brings the medicines to the people who need them, rather than having them go to the nearest health centre and queue for them there. For many who are healthy and can get about, it is no problem going to the next village and get the medicines from the health centre there, but many old people and many people with disabilities have welcomed the new scheme with open arms as it makes it hugely easier for them to obtain the medicines without leaving their home village or town.

Secondly, the scheme makes it possible for the pharmacists to not just dole out pills but to actually check and control, advise and counsel the people taking the medicines.

Actually, what is emerging from the first days of implementation of this new scheme, is uncovering cases, far more serious than just medicines taken for animals, where free medicine was actually harming people, rather than curing them.

There were cases found where people went to different consultants who recommended conflicting medicines for them, but, since these recommendations ended up written on separate forms (the pink and the yellow ones) people were, for instance taking both warfarin and aspirin when these act against each other.

In other cases, people were taking anti-depressants and also taking St John’s Wort when these too are conflicting medicines.

There were also instances were people were being given antibiotics for a long period of time when they clearly had no need to take them but nobody told them.

The first days of the new scheme are thus uncovering the huge amount of unneeded medicines that people are taking. It is only when the scheme is administered by a local pharmacist that it becomes something much better than the doling out of pills. Some pharmacists estimate that as many as one quarter of all pills given for free are not really needed.

Although pharmacists are remunerated for being in the scheme, it has imposed huge burdens on them, not just space-wise but also the paperwork involved. Yet they are all for it as it allows them to really do their proper work, which is to dispense both medicines and advice.

The new scheme however, they feel, is not being pushed enough by the government – no mention of it has been made in the media for quite a long time now. This inertia is playing into the hands of those in the central system, the pharmacists at the health centres and t the hospital, who have reacted very negatively to the introduction of the POYC.

The few people who have been recruited to work in the central system have reported they were welcomed much as strike-breakers would.

Pharmacists gearing up for what they are already calling a “showdown meeting” on 17 January, are asking if there is more to this reaction than just a bureaucratic reaction to the introduction of something new. They are also calling upon the government to back the new system far more strongly than it has done so far.