Visiting places in Serbia, Minister of Health Danica Grujičić realized that in a large number of pharmacies pharmaceutical technicians work, without it being in accordance with the law.
The Law on Health Care (Article 233) stipulates, among other things, that it is being performed pharmacy activities a pharmaceutical technician is prohibited from performing pharmaceutical health activities without the presence of a Master of Pharmacy.
Prva Grujičić, a guest on television, said that there is a pharmacy in almost every outpatient clinic in Serbia, but that they are mostly private pharmacies, and that there are so many of them that there are not that many pharmacists who would work in those facilities.
President of the Basic Organization of the Union of Doctors and Pharmacists of Serbia, Dom zdravlja Ruma, graduate pharmacist specialist in pharmaceutical technology, Dušanka Stefanović Radisavljević, told "Vreme" that there are twice as many pharmacy establishments in Serbia compared to European Union (EU) standards, and this happened due to uncontrolled opening pharmacy - "as if the state has lost sight of what and how it has".
"Profit at all costs"
Dubravka Stefanović Radisavljević explains that the commercialization of their profession - "profit at any cost" - has led to the fact that it is more advantageous for an employer in the private sector to hire staff with a secondary education rather than a highly educated staff.
"It shouldn't be like that." In pharmacy, we have pharmacists, specialists who are totally lost in this kind of system. For nothing, we spent three, four, five years on specializations when the system does not see us and does not allow us to do what we were trained for. We belong to pharmacies and we in pharmacies should realize our work, and it has come to the point that we now do not know where we belong. That is why people in many places are deprived of, for example, the preparation of master's preparations", indicates our interlocutor.
The law also stipulates that - pharmaceutical technicians are prohibited from independently making galenic, i.e. magisterial, medicines.
"You don't have anywhere in the doctor's office that the nurse will do what the doctor was trained to do, and that the doctor will give injections or dress wounds." It all got messed up here - someone who is in charge of handling medicines, controlling deadlines, making it all complex is now put to work with the patient, and the one who should work with the patient is marginalized precisely because it is harder to get work, the greater his salary is not desirable staff", says Stefanović Radisavljević.
He adds that that's why young people leave to either be representatives of pharmaceutical companies or leave the profession, which is not the point, but the point is to keep them in pharmacies because - "that's where we realize our knowledge and all the skills we've acquired." Every day we learn something new and we should be allowed to give that knowledge to someone because we were not taught for nothing that the patient is at the center of all our activities".
Privatization
As "Vreme" recently wrote The board of directors of Apoteka Kraljevo decided to lease eight of its most profitable premises.
Two years ago, the Kraljevo Pharmacy Institution was left without a pharmacy near the General Hospital, which brought in as much as a third of its total income. It was clear that this, until then profitable institution, would begin to sell out.
Predrag Voštinić from the Local Front tells "Vreme" that the problem with the pharmacy establishment is that the city government is trying to privatize the most profitable part of the establishment, the bars, despite the procedure and against the will of the people who live in Kraljevo.
"That could be a reason in a business sense, but not in a public sense. Because the pharmacy institution is the only one that had the obligation, which it implemented, to have on-call pharmacies that work 24 hours a day. And they made preparations according to the doctor's recommendation and recipe. They were a pharmaceutical and galenic establishment. If we were to lose those pharmacies, we would also lose that service, and that cannot be in the public interest," says Voštinić.
The Kraljevac pharmacy is unique in that it prepares a large number of preparations that are not available on the market, and at a price that is below economic justification.
Work conditions
Stefanović Radisavljević, who normally works in a state pharmacy, says that the conditions are such that they are constantly in the shadow of "there will be privatization, they will sell us".
"It's a big burden. It doesn't mean anything to us, we were educated for our job and we will work everywhere as we learned and as we should, but why the threat?"
He explains that their conditions must be improved and that it is not right that all the rules that apply to the state sector, such as the procurement of medicines by tenders, do not apply to the private sector as well - "if they apply to ours, they apply to the private sector as well or they do not apply for no one".
He also adds that unlike the private sector, which provides its personnel with some education, the state sector is still not financially able to provide such a thing to all employees, to do so continuously and to be in accordance with the needs of a health professional who wants to improve his knowledge so that he could do his job better.
He concludes that this is a life calling - "I am a pharmacist both at work and at home. Someone will always ask me something and I want to know as much as possible and to provide and help as much as I can because that is the purpose".
