At two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the active pensioners’ association PRO Ljusneorten is gathered in the small room in central Ljusne. At the Tuesday gatherings, the recurring program item is “slices for coffee”, musical entertainment led by Tord Blom. The average age is high! We can all run a walker rally, says Tord Blom and makes a sweeping gesture over the small congregation. Tord Blom describes the effort as a doctor’s visit and now means a total of over three hours to take the bus into the health center in Söderhamn, and then trudge through the snow to visit the pharmacy and pick up medicine. “A district nurse once a week would be good anyway,” he says. The same day has The 84-year-old, who can no longer drive, took the bus one and a half miles to Söderhamn for a doctor’s appointment, and then trudged in the snow to the pharmacy to take out the medicine prescribed by the doctor. He calculates in hundreds of shillings what it costs for a ride service or medical trips to town for care and pharmacy visits, tangible expenses for the town’s pensioners. “It will also be a cost for the region, says Tord Blom.
In the mill’s heyday, there was a lot of activity here: Trade stalls, hotels, salmon farming, infirmary, doctor’s residence and pharmacy. It was connected to the sawmill industry.
– The pharmacy is what you miss the most. I don’t have any diseases, but you need pharmacy products, says Vanja Jokinen, 81. For the town’s two nursing homes, it is a clear deterioration.
Inside the expedition at the Kastanjen nursing home, nurses Anna Carlsson and Kim Nilsson are busy. The municipality’s janitor comes with medicines and lab samples three days a week. – It was simpler before, with a pharmacy and health center in the same building. If someone was missing medicine, we called and they fixed it, says Anna Carlsson.
The PRO association’s chairman Lisbeth Karlsson went together with Tord Blom the seven miles to Gävle to hand over 876 collected signatures to the regional politicians. They stressed the great care needs of the elderly, and that many lack a car.
Closed at the turn of the year both health center and pharmacy. By then, a coalition with M, KD, SD and the Health Care Party had taken over power in the region. But the economy is struggling, and in March it was announced – despite political promises – that there will be no health center under the auspices of the region. “The region does not have the resources to run a health center in Ljusne. Where are we going to get the money? In that case, we have to cut back somewhere else,” said financial regional councilor Patrik Stenvard.
Apoteket Hjärtat points out that the customer base in Ljusne became too small when the health center closed. Patients generally choose to collect their medications when they visit the doctor. The number of closed pharmacies has increased significantly in recent years, and in the first half of 2023, 24 pharmacies were closed.
Researchers have also highlighted that pharmacies play a particularly important role in rural areas. Charlotta Mellander, professor of economics who researches regional development, has mapped the availability of pharmacies after deregulation. TLV assesses that more than one in ten, or 161 pharmacies, have poor profitability or run at a loss. An estimated 850,000 Swedes would be affected if these pharmacies were forced to close.