There Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health (SItI) sent a open letter to the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci regarding the “Simplifications” and Prevention Billwhich intends to broaden the range of services that citizens can use in pharmacies. A measure – aimed at providing the citizen essential local services and which comes to clarify the permitted activities – welcomed by the scientific society, which has always shown itself open to discussion to achieve objectives of improvement from the individual and public health.
There Italian Hygiene Societyhowever, also in light of the experience gained during the Covid-19 pandemicdid not fail to strongly underline how these services must be accompanied by careful safety assessments, quality and effectiveness. The two new issues are represented by the possibility, only for those pharmacies that intend to exercise these prerogatives, to administer the vaccines present in the vaccination calendar of the National Vaccine Prevention Plan (PNPV), to the definition of which SItI contributed, to subjects over the age of 12, as well as carrying out diagnostic tests involving the collection of biological samples at nasal, salivary and oropharyngeal levels.
Although this Bill focuses on the issue of training and of safety for the purposes of providing the aforementioned services within pharmacies, it is considered essential that, during the approval process, the Parliament can refer to subsequent implementing decrees the definition of these aspects, better regulating both the quality criteria relating to staff training person in charge of administering vaccines, who the vaccination prescribing process – especially with regards to elderly and frail patientswho often take concomitant therapies that require an in-depth anamnestic evaluation – as well as the methods of collection and processing of sensitive data and the emergency management possibly linked to side effects of administration, although rare.
The scientific society considers it equally important to monitor there real activation of these services on the national territory, verifying their use by citizens and the actual ability to improve coverage. In this regard, the experience acquired with flu and Covid-19 vaccinations in the 2023-24 season has highlighted the risk that a fragmentation of supply could negatively impact vaccination coverage. Therefore, in order to avoid dispersing the vaccination paths into a thousand streams, in the opinion of the Italian Hygiene Society, it is of fundamental importance to identify a clear governance of the entire process in Prevention Departments.
«With this letter, addressed to Prof. Orazio Schillaci – he declares Roberta SiliquiniPresident of the Italian Hygiene Society – we propose that the Ministry of Health promotes the establishment of a discussion table that involves all the actors in the process, in order to guarantee the population shared and safe paths throughout the national territory ».
