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The pharmacy cross never goes out. This is the motto that since the Covid pandemic began back in March 2020, the pharmacists Spanish people. They were at the foot of the canyon in the worst of confinement and now a volcano has not managed to turn off the light of the pharmacies of The Palm, where many neighbors have not only continued to find their medicines but also help and comfort in the loss of their homes. This year, the ABC Salud award for the best project or initiative in Pharmacy goes to the Official College of Pharmacists of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife for their response to the social emergency caused by the volcano.
When the eruption began on September 19, Sunday, Manuel Ángel Galván, president of the Official College of Pharmacists of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, immediately called his colleagues on the governing board, including the member of the school in La Palma, Marcelo Rodríguez, to act fast.
«We contacted the pharmacies with two clear objectives: patients could not run out of medications and the safety of the pharmacy office workers had to be guaranteed ”, explains Galván.
On Monday, they stumbled upon a harsh reality: People had been evacuated from their homes with no time to collect medicine or documentation. “People came out with what they were wearing,” recalls the president of the pharmacists. Many neighbors found themselves on Monday without the drugs they needed, without the health card to buy them and in shock at having had to leave their homes. “In many cases they did not remember what their medication was. There are older people who know that their pill is blue, white or yellow but not the name. And some did not even remember their ID number. There was even a case of a man who appeared with a white shirt full of black ash and it was difficult for him to even say his name, ”says Galván.
The Official College of Pharmacists of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife contacted the Canary Islands Health Service so that from the pharmacy offices, Only with the name and the DNI number, they could identify the health card of the user and the treatment to be able to dispense it. The next problem they encountered is that a prescription cannot be re-dispensed before the patient has finished it. But in some cases the treatments had been left half in houses under the lava. “That first week, many colleagues gave patients the medication because they could not leave them without it,” explains Galván. This problem has been solved as users have obtained a duplicate of their health card. The pharmacists thus managed to cushion the first impact.
Donation collection
From the College they wanted to go further. They asked all the colleagues in Spain (22,100 pharmacies) to place them in their premises posters with information on how to donate directly to the institutions that work to alleviate the social emergency. “In La Palma they did not need clothes or food, but money to buy in the shops there so that economic activity did not collapse,” says Galván.
The island has 31 pharmacies and the volcano has respected the vast majority. Currently there are three closed. Two of them have been destroyed and can no longer be located in the same place. The third is evacuated because the access roads are no longer standing.
Some of the pharmacy workers are also victims who have lost their homes. The College of Pharmacists of Tenerife has carried out another initiative to collect donations within the sector itself, through the colleges of pharmacists in the Canary Islands and other parts of Spain, which are intended for personnel who work in pharmacy offices or in the pharmacy services of hospitals on La Palma, and that have been affected.
Thanks to this initiative they have raised enough money to be able to respond to the most serious cases in which the habitual residence had been lost. “We cannot buy a house, that’s what the administrations are for, but we can help with the first impact by facilitating the rental of another house until the aid arrives,” says the president of the pharmacists of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The workers of the pharmacy offices of La Palma also had to act as improvised psychologists at first. Regulars arrived there with tears in their eyes because of the situation. And the pharmacists themselves ended up crying under the emotional pressure. The College of Pharmacists contacted the College of Psychologists and reached an agreement: provide psychologists’ phones at the pharmacy so that anyone who needed it could contact one of these professionals.
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