The Malta Chamber for Small and Medium Size Enterprises (GRTU) and the Malta Chamber of Pharmacists yesterday issued a joint appeal to the public to “stand up, be counted and make your voice heard” over the long-delayed implementation of a so-called Pharmacy of Your Choice scheme.

The scheme would effectively see pharmacies dispensing the free medicines that some 140,000 Maltese are entitled to and eliminating the onerous requirement for these individuals to travel to a government pharmacy, of which there are only a handful, to have their prescriptions served. A patient from Mellieha, for example, needs to travel all the way to Mosta, while all the Gozitans need to commute to Victoria just to have their prescriptions dispensed.

“Patients have been subjected to an antiquated and inefficient system for far too long, which has translated into costs and a great deal of difficulties,” GRTU director general Vince Farrugia said yesterday.

He added: “After 10 years of trying to reach a solution for the implementation of such a system, lobbying by the GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists has not been enough. We are now taking the argument to the public. The matter transcends both the GRTU and the chamber in that it is essentially a public matter that the public should be insisting on.”

Such a “community pharmacy” system is in place in countries across the European Union and is considered a cornerstone of public health systems. The results of talks, reports and commissions looking into implementing such a system in Malta, however, have been continually upset.

Negotiations between the two representative bodies and the government have been ongoing for the last 10 years, while patients continue suffering the need to travel long distances and endure lengthy queues merely to secure their right to free medicines, Mr Farrugia yesterday told a news conference convened to take the issue to the public.

While discussions continue to drag on at an excruciatingly slow pace, the GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists yesterday argued that a “’healthy’ cooperation between the government health services and community pharmacies and pharmacists is the best formula for sustaining the ailing public health sector”.

They also called on the government to “empower the community pharmaceutical service by intensifying the dialogue which at present, is, at best, intermittent and unsatisfactory, without outcomes which can be implemented for better patient care and further development of the sector on the levels that befit EU citizens, both users and operators.”

A number of options have been discussed but at the end of the day what the scheme boils down to is a public-private partnership of the sort extolled by the government as the way forward for many public services.

A solution exists among the numerous technical options proposed and discussed, but the government now needs to move on one of the options, Mr Farrugia added.

The implementation of such a system, Mr Farrugia explained, would cost the government somewhere in the region of Lm1 million. He added that with all the budget expenditure year in year out, the government was quibbling about a comparatively modest sum, while patients continued to suffer by having to use public transport and enduring the rain, cold and heat merely to exercise their right to free medication.

Malta Chamber of Pharmacists president Mary Anne Sant Fournier commented that in addition to the brass tacks of the scheme, the way medicines were dispensed at present, through government pharmacies, meant that patients were being deprived of the added value of having a one-on-one relationship with their pharmacists.

She added that pharmacies were not looking for any profits from the introduction of such a system, but they did need to cover their costs in terms of time, medicinal storage and prescription fees – although the levying of a prescription fee on the system’s users is out of the question. The chamber, she explained, would be prepared for any kind of external audit to gauge how much the scheme would cost the government.

The cost savings of implementing such a system, it was argued by GRTU pharmacy owners section president Mario Debono, would more than offset the expenditure involved.

Through the system, patients with yellow or pink health benefit cards would choose one or more pharmacies within their locality to register with, as opposed to simply dropping into any pharmacy and having a prescription dispensed. The idea is to make savings for the pharmacies on unnecessary and costly storage of medicines.

“The ball is now in the government’s court,” Ms Sant Fournier added.