Madam, – Margaret Halley (August 5th) describes three terrible incidents which highlight how patients suffer in any dispute involving the healthcare services. She then blames the Minster for Health and the HSE.
Ms Halley and her fellow pharmacists should realise that it takes two to tango. They are as responsible for these patients suffering as the Minister for Health and the HSE patients should not be used as pawns in any dispute. It undermines the whole health service and patients already minimal confidence in our health service. Primum non nocere (first, do no harm). The pharmacists’ actions and those of the HSE in allowing this dispute is harming patients and should cease immediately. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Could not the current impasse with pharmaceutical dispensing availability, be a golden opportunity to address the flagrant over-use, over-prescription and over-dependence on medication?
The ingrained triad of self-interest which fuels this swollen distortion, deserves to be lanced with some judicious pruning and a dose of authentic realism. Such release would distil a more efficacious and palatable elixir for the population at large, who could thus be shorn of the fallacy of a pill for every ill. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – It was with some bemusement that I read the comments of Fianna Fáil TD Chris Andrews about the need for dialogue in the ongoing dispute between pharmacists and the HSE (“HSE contingency plan failed first test, claim pharmacists”, August 3rd). His comments would be somewhat more credible if they did not come from the lips of a Government TD.
The Government has created this dispute by allowing the independent minister Ms Mary Harney to pursue one sector in a manner which appears unjust and smacks of bad faith. Apparently of the view that there is little difference between running a pharmacy and a corner shop, the Minister remains intransigent. She states ad nauseam that pharmacy fees increased by 100 per cent in a 10-year period.
Between 1997 and 2006 ministerial pay increased by 135 per cent, a fact easily verifiable by looking at the Dáil debates of December 14th, 2006. I know of no plan to reduce the remuneration of ministers in proportion to the pharmacy cuts.
This Government is already associated with poor management and unfairness.
Its disproportionate pursuit of community pharmacy – one section of the health service which actually works – only serves to shore up that reputation. – Yours, etc,