Approximately 24,000 pharmacies will not open on Friday to protest the decrease in medicine prices; only pharmacies on duty will be open.Kayseri Chamber of Pharmacists President Ahmet Özçavuşoğlu said the effects of this change will come after the implementation of the decision, which is set to be enforced on Friday. While stating that the cost of the decision will be paid by pharmacists and eventually patients, Özçavuşoğlu said 7,000 pharmacies will go bankrupt and close by the new year.
Claiming that many people will be unemployed due to the decision and that there may be further changes to the health system in Turkey in the future, Özçavuşoğlu said: “We always supported a solution. Despite all of our positive attitudes, our demands were always delayed, and they did not hear us.”
Stressing that they will not yield to those who want to destroy pharmacists, he continued: “The current situation is the fault of those who bring us close to going out of business and who leave the health sector to the mercy of the economy. We do not aim to victimize our patients. Thus, we will take special precautions, increasing the number of pharmacies on duty. The pharmacies that will go out of business are warnings. The one-day closure of pharmacies is a rehearsal of the days that will come.”
He also added that 320 pharmacies will be closed on Friday in Kayseri.The decision was released about 45 days ago, and it will discount the prices of 2,750 medicines. Pharmacists stress that the medicine companies’ profits do not decrease, but pharmacists’ profits do.
Explaining that the pharmacists have been facing more and more problems in the last couple of years, Mahmut Yazıcıoğlu, general-secretary of Aktif Eczacılar Derneği (Active Pharmacists Association), complained about the constant changes affecting pharmacies initiated by the state and said, “Pharmacists cannot handle the profit loses due to the decrease in medicine prices when one out of three pharmacies is about to go bankrupt.”
