Health Department of Fars News Agency: Not long ago, a correspondence was sent from the head of the Iranian Pharmacists Association to the Minister of Health, in which the letter strongly criticized the Red Crescent Society for having a pharmacy and demanded the closure of 36 important Red Crescent pharmacies in the country. This conflict between the Red Crescent Society and the Association of Pharmacists has existed for years; So that the Association of Pharmacists considers the activities of Red Crescent pharmacies as harmful for the private pharmacy sector, and on the other hand, Red Crescent considers its pharmaceutical services to be in the interests of the country and for the better and fair distribution of certain drugs, even though these conflicts have a specific result. It did not follow, but a few days ago, the Deputy Minister of Education of the Ministry of Health, in a letter addressed to the Minister of Health, demanded the issuance of licenses for “Educational City” pharmacies.
Application for issuing a license to set up new urban educational pharmacies
in part of Letter from the Deputy Minister of Health It has been stated, “As you have mentioned, the main condition of training a powerful and effective pharmacist in the pharmaceutical service cycle is to benefit from the appropriate training areas to acquire the skills of providing services. In this regard, and considering the activity of a significant share of pharmacy graduates in urban pharmacies, the need to have “educational urban pharmacies” under the full supervision of the pharmacy schools of the country is completely tangible and undeniable.
Unfortunately, with the conducted investigations, it was found that in the overwhelming majority of pharmacy schools across the country, there is a severe lack or sometimes the absence of an urban educational pharmacy affiliated to the pharmacy school, which causes many problems in training pharmacy students and providing internship courses in the fields foreseen in the educational program. Pharmacy has created. It should be noted that according to the developed standards, it is mandatory to have a city educational pharmacy for every 70 to 75 pharmacy students.
The lack or absence of this important educational field has always been objected to and demanded by the country’s medical sciences universities, and it has also been emphasized and seriously requested in the recent national meeting of the heads and vice presidents of pharmacy schools across the country. Therefore, according to the explanations provided, it is necessary to issue a license for the establishment of new urban educational pharmacies under the cover of pharmacy colleges by the Food and Drug Organization.
The establishment of an educational pharmacy requires special conditions and terms
This letter has been seriously opposed by the Association of Pharmacists, so that Seyed Ali Fatemi, Vice President of the Iranian Pharmacists Association In this regard, he told Fars: The establishment of an educational pharmacy is allowed only in universities of medical sciences that have a faculty of pharmacy and one year has passed since its establishment. This issue is also conditional on the university admitting at least 75 students per year, and the educational pharmacy license must be issued in Tehran province, not by the universities of medical sciences in the provinces!
According to Fatemi, the establishment of an educational pharmacy requires special terms and conditions, but in practice, this issue is not paid attention to, and whenever the government wants to compete with the private sector, it uses these names, for example, it is stated in the Red Crescent Statute that The establishment of the Red Crescent Pharmacy should be done in times of crisis and upon the request of the Ministry of Health, but in practice this did not happen and these pharmacies entered the service field, and the Red Crescent Pharmacy has been established in all provinces and sells all types of medicine.
He continued: The same thing has happened to the educational pharmacy, the use of words like “educational” is not sensitive and everyone thinks that the goal of the government is to train pharmacists, but in fact, the number of educational pharmacies in the provinces is more than one. The basis of the regulation is that there should not be more than one pharmacy.
Public pharmacies competing with the private sector
The vice president of the Iranian Pharmacists Association continued: the 29 Farvardin pharmacy should also distribute medicine in times of emergency, but this same pharmacy has also become a competitor of the private sector, the 13 Aban pharmacy, which is educational, has also become a competitor of the private sector, and the turnover Each of them is several times more than private sector pharmacies. Some of these pharmacies have daily sales of 4 billion tomans, which shows that the motivation for creating these pharmacies is to make money, not education. Today, the number of government pharmacies in the country is less than a thousand, but their financial turnover is more than 15 thousand private pharmacies. This issue shows the uneven bottom line, and we have several monthly requests for the establishment of pharmacies of state, military and Red Crescent universities, which are resisted in the Article 20 Commission of the Center.
He clarified: the letter of the Deputy Minister of Health also shows extensive lobbying and this issue is wrong address and the motivation of these pharmacies is economic, when the government faces a shortage of drugs and cannot distribute drugs to 15 thousand private pharmacies immediately It distributes drugs in the government pharmacy, and these pharmacies are getting fatter day by day. When there is a shortage of medicine, there is a lot of crowding in these pharmacies, and it is better for the government to distribute medicines in private sector pharmacies so that we do not witness this crowding.
Avoiding impeachment by responding to the request of the representatives
Fatemi said: “Unfortunately, today, due to the jeopardy of the pharmacy economy, pharmacies are selling supplements and cosmetic products, but if they had been properly planned and supported, the pharmacies would have returned to their main mission of selling medicine.” . In some cases, we see that parliament members threaten ministers with impeachment, and therefore the minister is forced to comply with their request to avoid impeachment. The Minister of Health was recently under serious impeachment, and the representatives withdrew the impeachment with promises.
He continued: “Establishing each government pharmacy endangers the jobs of a hundred pharmacists in the private sector, and on the contrary, handing them over creates a work space for several hundred pharmacists. The country is not economically stable and we are facing drug shortages, so there are conditions for abuse.” Government and military bodies are available.
This pharmacist stated that according to the Red Crescent Law, he has no right to establish a pharmacy, and the establishment of a Red Crescent Pharmacy must be done upon the request of the Ministry of Health, but in many cases we see pressure from the representatives to establish a Hilal Pharmacy, and said: These institutions should not be competitors of the private sector and we announce We said that if the Red Crescent continues this action, we will complain to the International Red Crescent, but we have not done this so far because we do not want to cause any problems for the country.
Yesterday, in response to the establishment of educational pharmacies, the Vice President of the Pharmacists Association of Tehran pointed out the unequal turnover of private pharmacies compared to government pharmacies and said: The Pharmacists Association is strongly against the establishment of this type of pharmacies. Because this will cause the public sector to become fatter, and so far this issue has caused a lot of damage to the private sector. Now, according to the protests in this field, it should be seen what decision the government will take to manage the current situation and support private pharmacies.
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