The Minister of Health sends a message to millions of Romanians from all over the country drawing their attention to a situation in connection with which they should be careful, more precisely taking iodine pills through family doctors before reaching a crisis situation in which immediate administration is necessary.
The Minister of Health says that in August the threats from the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant increased the number of people who chose to take their iodine pills, but people need to think more preventively and take them in time to have them, even if they will not need them, unless they need them, and have nowhere to get them.
"Every month in Romania, there are about 3 million consultations with family doctors, so a large number of Romanians could receive a simple prescription with which to go and pick up their iodine pills. For me, the pace is encouraging, I admit that it is not our strong point, so in general, and there is no criticism, preventive behavior is not our strong point as traditionally.
I don't know what the solution would have been, because we have some legal provisions, we have a drug that is released on the basis of a prescription, and then the solution was that the drug should be released in pharmacies on the basis of a prescription, or be released directly by the family doctor. Family doctors, you know very well, refused to issue this medicine directly.
Then only the other solution remained. Of course, in a major crisis situation you can turn to other distribution mechanisms, but then you have a timing problem, and I don't understand why we can't take these pills in a period of relative calm, and we have to wait a moment of crisis, so we don't have to wait for such a moment.
We can make this request very simply to the family doctor who is not overcrowded. You know well, when we launched the program, there were doctors who had hundreds of people assaulting them, but in the first month they issued only 1.200 prescriptions at the national level."
