between 75% and 90% of pharmacies will be closed on Thursday, according to the unions

A strike notice has been filed by the pharmacists’ unions for Thursday, May 30. Around thirty gatherings are planned throughout France.

Between 15,000 and 18,000 pharmacies, out of the 20,500 in France, will be closed on Thursday May 30, according to forecasts collected by Agence Radio France from the profession’s unions. Which corresponds to a rate of mobilized pharmacies between 75% and 90%. The two unions, the Federation of Community Pharmacists (FSPF) and the Union of Community Pharmacists Unions (USPO) have filed a national strike notice, also supported by the Order of Pharmacists.

For example “80% of Breton pharmacies” will lower the curtain, according to the regional health agency. In Corsica “90% of pharmacies declare themselves on strike in Corse-du-Sud (out of 57 pharmacies) and 86% in Haute-Corse (out of 70 pharmacies)”indicates the island’s ARS, which also announces that “the guards scheduled at night will therefore be ensured”because “the movement concerns the day only”.

In this context, certain pharmacies will be requisitioned. But “the requisitioned establishments will only provide urgent needs, patients are therefore invited, as far as possible, to anticipate or postpone their needs for pharmaceutical products”, warns, for example, the ARS Bretagne.

Around thirty gatherings are planned, including a demonstration in Paris at 3 p.m. between the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Ministry of the Economy.

Among their demands, pharmacists are asking the government to implement a plan to combat drug shortages. And while negotiations have begun with Health Insurance, the unions intend to put pressure on to demand an increase in their fees.

“It is not the margin of medicines that remunerates us the most, it is the fees, and we are asking for an increase in the fees,” Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the USPO union, told franceinfo.

We have a loss of approximately 60,000 euros per pharmacy, and today Health Insurance offers us an increase of 8,000 euros per year.

Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the USPO union

at franceinfo

“We have suffered the full brunt of inflation, like many, but it has been even more present in our pharmacies because of the salaries, which we pay to our employees, much higher than normal, which means that there are cascading closures”, he continues. According to him, “in January there were 36 closures, twice as many as last year.”