2024-03-16 08:46:40
And just the fact that ten participants from a sample of 1,000 people from all over Greece declare that they suffer from some chronic disease is quite impressive. Among them, women, especially old people, and people with low income predominate. Although the vast majority of respondents (96%) are insured, it appears that they often pay for their health care out of their own resources.
Indicatively, on average a household spends 955 euros in a year for health issues. Makes sense, as just under half visit private doctors not contracted to their Fund and around one in two take over-the-counter drugs.
Therefore, 22% state that in the last year there were times when they did not use health services when they should have, due to cost. The ills of the public health system are obviously linked to the shift to private health insurance – with one in five now having private insurance.
These are some of the interesting conclusions of the latest research carried out jointly by the Health Policy Institute and diaNEOsis on behalf of the organization GIVMED / Share medicine Share Life. And access to the right medicine, however, does not seem to be self-evident, as one in six answers that they have faced obstacles in the supply of medicines and as clarified this mostly concerns finding the right medicine for their treatment.
On the contrary, one in two states that they have left over medicines, which they keep at home. Almost everyone claims to know the stock of medicines they have in their cupboards, but only three in ten regularly check if they are nearing their expiry date.
In the management of surplus medicines, the respondents remain rather questionable: one in two found, more or less, expired medicines in their home and of these one in five found more than four boxes. More than half (55.1%) throw them in the trash, while 37.8% return them to pharmacies. Ignorance also prevails regarding the management of unexpired medicines, as most claim that they do not know where to give them. Only one in four, mostly women, donated medicines in the last year, “because they expired immediately and he didn’t need them”. Of these, half gave them to a private pharmacy, while the offer follows to a social pharmacy – an institution that gathers a unanimously positive evaluation – and then to structures or events related to the collection of medicines.
Very few people are aware of the existence of the green bins in pharmacies, intended for unexpired medicines. Most of those who know about the green bins think that they can dispose of expired medicines there.
Source kathimerini.gr
Ioanna Fotiadis