The electronic issuing of prescriptions for antibiotics will not be discontinued, Health Minister Hristo Hinkov told journalists here on Tuesday. In his words, alerts about drawbacks of the e-prescription system will be collected by the end of October and then improvements will be made, if necessary. Swapping medicinal products at the pharmacy's decision should not be allowed, he added.
Earlier in the day, the head of the Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA), Dr Ivan Madzharov, demanded that the e-prescriptions for antibiotics and diabetes medications be stopped immediately. In his words, only 24 hours after their entry into force, the truth about their introduction became clear. The BMA has been receiving a large number of alerts from across Bulgaria about pharmacies refusing to sell patients electronically prescribed antibiotics, saying the patients should go back to their GPs to get a prescription for another antibiotics, because the initially prescribed one was not available.
Hinkov explained that if the medicinal product prescribed is not available in a given pharmacy, that is not a problem of the e-prescription. He could not say what the reason for that problem was. At the pharmacy, the patient should receive exactly what the doctor has prescribed, the Health Minister argued.
When a given medicinal product is not available at a pharmacy, the latter is obliged to provide it within 24 hours, Hinkov recalled the legislative provisions, adding that those have not been observed for a very long time. "We did not know that before because there were no e-prescriptions," he noted. He stated firmly that paper prescriptions will not be resumed. There is no going back; electronization is unavoidable, he said, commenting on Dr Madzharov's call for suspension of e-prescriptions for antibiotics until the situation becomes clear. E-prescriptions shed light on many dark areas that paper prescriptions kept unseen until now, Hinkov said.
Asked how the control on prescriptions will be increased, Hinkov said that one of the ways is to connect the e-prescription system with the National Health Information System and patients' health records.
Parliamentary Health Committee Chairperson Kostadin Angelov (GERB-UDF) commented that the State had had three months to prepare for the e-prescription, starting from its approval by the Health Committee back in August. Bulgaria is among the countries with the highest use of non-prescribed antibiotics, which leads to serious risks related to antibiotic resistance. In five to ten years, Bulgarians will practically be dying from harmless infectious diseases, Angelov told journalits.
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