Pharmacist will issue prescriptions for reimbursed vaccines. Will the health ministry have time before autumn?

On Tuesday, vaccinations, specifically the status of preparations for the 2024/2025 infection season, were discussed during a meeting of the Senate Health Committee. Katarzyna Piotrowska-Radziewicz, director of the Department of Drug Policy and Pharmacy, said that one of the measures to shorten the path to vaccination that is being worked on is to give pharmacists the ability to issue reimbursable prescriptions (at the moment, a pharmacist can issue a prescription for a vaccine, such as the flu vaccine, but it is full-price). The new regulations could take effect in the fall of 2024, she said. - We are working with the Supreme Pharmaceutical Chamber on this, and we hope to get it through fairly smoothly. I don't know if we'll make it for September, but I think in the fall maybe this change will come into effect," she said.

Looking at the parliamentary calendar, it is rather certain that nothing will happen in September, and even October faces a big question mark: the draft changes to the law are not there yet, consultations will have to last a minimum of three weeks, and August is a month of parliamentary vacation, with the first session after the vacation scheduled for early September.

As experts invited to the committee meeting stressed, it is already literally the last call to finalize all the regulations that will apply to the new season. It is known that most Poles against influenza - of course, those who are considering vaccination - want to be vaccinated as early as September, in October at the latest. Meanwhile, in recent years, decisions on the logistics of vaccination went into effect even in November, and because of this they simply did not work.

Among the barriers that are currently holding back seasonal vaccinations, she pointed out, first of all, the lack of reimbursement if someone wants to get vaccinated at their doctor's office (they can do so, but they will have to pay for the vaccine if they don't want to go to the pharmacy with a prescription) and also at the pharmacy - if they don't have a prescription from their doctor. Bozena Janicka, president of the PPOZ, pointed out that the availability of seasonal vaccinations is drastically decreasing, because at the moment, she said, there are about six hundred pharmacies left in the vaccination program and more than seven thousand PPOZ clinics, which should vaccinate, do not have free vaccines for those eligible.

The meeting was also attended by the Chief Sanitary Inspector, Dr. Pawel Grzesiowski. Referring to vaccination, he recalled that there is not yet an approved new vaccine against COVID-19. "However, we must be prepared for such a situation that this vaccine will appear, for example, in a month or two, and we must have a system ready to buy and dispose of this vaccine," he stressed.

Deputy Health Minister Ursula Demkow, replacing Deputy Minister in charge of public health Wojciech Konieczny at the meeting, noted that it is important to start flu vaccinations before the flu season begins. She assured that she will try to speed up the implementation of the vaccine campaign.