The Minister of Health issues an extremely serious warning for millions of Romanians throughout the country, one that must be known by everyone at the moment, after a well-known doctor stated that there are more and more cases of Romanians consuming pills with iodine.
The Minister of Health warns Romanians not to consume these pills as a preventive measure, and to administer them exclusively following an announcement by the authorities related to a possible major radioactive accident, and this because the effects on health can be very serious.
"I hope it is not a mass phenomenon, and there are 2 very important elements here that I would like to mention. First of all, we made a sustained campaign that lasted 3 months, on TV in general, in which it is very clearly mentioned that this product should not be taken preventively, and it is only taken when there is an announcement from the authorities, correlated with a major radioactive incident.
The second issue that we insisted on, and some were upset, but it is an element of responsibility, is the fact that these pills are not issued without a prescription from the family doctor. It is clear that if someone has a prescription from the family doctor, they cannot get a second prescription from him, the same person, so presenting without it makes it impossible to issue the pills.
Pills should not be taken in an obvious preventive way, the dispensing is up to the pharmacy, and pharmacists know very well that drugs that can only be dispensed on the basis of a prescription, such as potassium iodide, must be dispensed as such, when the person comes with a prescription to be retained by the pharmacist at the time of dispensing the pills.
The situation with the distribution is as follows, towards the end of May, I made public a ministerial order, which was later approved, and I established that the circuit is as follows: every person up to 40 years old goes to the family doctor where is known, he receives the advice on the administration of the pills, and the prescription for lifting.
I was accused of inducing panic. If a normative act that has been in force for 50 days, and after 50 days you come and say "we must speed up this activity as quickly as possible, if possible", it was due to the fact that during this period almost nothing happened . Very few people showed up to get the prescriptions."
