Greek Crisis Has Pharmacists Pleading for Aspirin as Drug Supply Dries Up

[Mira]

Greek Crisis Has Pharmacists Pleading for Aspirin as Drug Supply Dries Up

By Naomi Kresge - Jan 10, 2012 5:01 PM ET

For patients and pharmacists in financially stricken Greece, even finding aspirin has turned into a headache.

Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.

“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines. Even when drugs are available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

The financial crisis is brewing a “Greek tragedy” of slowing access to medical care and worsening outcomes for patients, Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote in an October article in The Lancet.

The Greek Ministry of Health didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
‘Many Difficulties’

“It would be unrealistic to deny that there are many difficulties regarding all public services due to the financial crisis,” Nicolaos Polyzos, secretary general of the Ministry of Health, wrote in a response to McKee’s article posted on the ministry’s website. “However, this cannot justify characterizing the current picture of (the) health sector in Greece as a ‘tragedy.’”


source and the rest:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/greek-crisis-has-pharmacists-pleading-for-aspirin-as-drug-supply-dries-up.html

[girl gone mad]

1. Plenty of Money Though for Military Spending..

French and German banks get paid, the Ministry of Defense spends billions buying weapons from Germany, the people are forced to beg for aspirin.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2F2012%2F02%2FRuestung-Griechenland&act=url

Ugh.

[Warpy]

2. And plenty of money in the hands of people who think only little people pay taxes

There's a lot of that going around everywhere and until it's tackled for what it really is, I'm afraid things will continue to get a lot worst for not only Greeks, but all of us.

[jwirr]

3. Pay attention Big Pharma - you have been cut. This is one of the issues into our own future that

scares me. Medical supplies should be a national security issue. We should know what is available in each area and how much is needed each month. Then we should make sure that is going to be sustainable.

[cutlassmama]

4. I fear that will be coming soon here too. People better stock up now on what they can.