GIANLUIGI CANCELLI
SAVONA. One in four people from Savona give up treatment. Certainly not because he doesn't care about his health, but because with the money he has he is no longer able to cover pharmaceutical costs, especially for those medicines that fall into category C.
But not only. In recent weeks, bookings for specialist and dental visits have also drastically collapsed, which are carried out using the various pharmacies existing in the provincial territory, thus avoiding the risk of long waits at the Cupa branches of the ASL.
Further important signs that confirm once again how families find it more and more difficult to make ends meet every day. Because it is one thing to cut down on expenses that may be considered superfluous (such as mobile phones or the latest generation i-pads), another is when you are forced to give up buying a drug or booking a visit specialist.
But let's go back to the figure elaborated by the Order of Pharmacists of the province of Savona, which in any case reflects the national figure: in the first four months of 2013, the drop in sales of class C drugs was around twenty-five percent. «It is useless to deny it - says Giovanni Zorgno, president of the Order of Pharmacists of the province of Savona - the economic problems that are gripping a large part of Italian families are starting to make themselves felt and even heavily in our sector as well.
I personally had the opportunity to ascertain, but the same thing was also told to me by many other colleagues, how in recent weeks people have been trying to save as much as possible on the purchase of medicines, especially those in class C. In many cases the customer who goes to the counter and hears the amount he has to spend renounces the purchase, in some cases he says he has to think about it and asks if there is no other similar medicine at a lower cost than the one prescribed by the doctor .
Many people even ask us if there is no drug similar to the one prescribed
