They are trying to make the pharmacy market a monopoly - Marina Khachatryan (video)
Marina Khachatryan, a member of Yerkir Tsirani (Country of Apricot) faction talked about some remarkable realities, when researching the decision of the Government of Armenia to sell pharmacy only with prescriptions. “They are trying to make the pharmacy market a monopoly,” - she says.
Khachatryan is sure that after the decision comes into force there will be some pharmacies that will work without prescriptions but will raise the prices. Then these pharmacies may buy prescriptions from familiar doctors. She says: “The pharmacies, which will work with prescriptions, will be closed and the workers will immigrate.”
She says that the chemical compositions will be written in the prescriptions and it will cause problems for the pharmacy worker because in many pharmacies the workers are students.
“If the patient needs 6 kinds of drugs, the doctor can only write 2 names of medicines in a paper. It means that the doctor must fill 3 forms. If the pharmacy has only one of the drugs, they can sell it, filling in the name of the pharmacy in the form, and the form is handed to the pharmacy, which sells the second drug,”- she says. The member of City Council is afraid, that the pharmacies may sell drugs without prescriptions, telling that they only had the first drug.
The president of The Legal Defenders of Armenian Businessmen and Consumers NGO Arthur Atoyan says that the Minister of Justice doesn’t clarify the reasons of such decision. “There are 2 reasons that the patients don’t see a doctor: low social level and distrust towards doctors,” says Arthur Atoyan and adds that forcing people to visit a doctor at a state level is a consumer rights violation.
