Pharmacy to promote equity and cohesion in the healthcare system

Just a few days ago, we renewed our mandate at the head of the University Pharmaceutical Organization, promising continue to lead the profession to its rightful place in the health care system, in public health, and in the care and well-being of the population.

On these same pages I recalled how the process of transition to a healthcare model had already begun. Every fifth patient who visits a community pharmacy already receives pharmaceutical services in addition to medications.

related to smoking cessation programmes, screening for hidden diseases such as HIV or cancer, or medication monitoring and adherence services. Similarly, there are already many autonomous communities that have established networks sentinel pharmacies to enhance their role in public health.

The pharmaceutical profession has taken this path because society demands it. We are faced with global challenges for which the pharmacist has demonstrated that he can provide solutions. I’m talking about problems with drug supply, a shortage of health care workers, an increasingly aging and chronic population, a mental health pandemic, unwanted loneliness, an increase in sexually transmitted infections, or health misinformation.

AND, Although this journey towards a pharmacy that is more healthcare-oriented and more integrated into the healthcare system and public health strategies has already begun, it is not developing at the same speed throughout Spain.

Now a huge thing awaits us the opportunity to achieve consensus among all parties in the upcoming reform of the Law on Guarantees and Rational Use of Medicineswhich must be a future-oriented and guaranteeing law that develops our professional skills and ensures that where there is a medicine, there must always be a pharmacist. A legal reform that must focus on a pharmaceutical model that promotes health system cohesion, equal access to medicines and is ultimately a social achievement all citizens that we must take full advantage of, care for and make them sustainable.