The Parliamentary Committee on Public Health approved a bill allowing some pharmacists to administer Covid-19 vaccinations, but the association of general practitioners Domus Medica is very critical of the decision.
By also allowing pharmacists to vaccinate people against the virus, Federal Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke wants to reach people who rarely or never go to the doctor, but who do go to the pharmacist.
"The idea is – in addition to what we do in the vaccination centres and what the general practitioners do – to give people the chance to be vaccinated," Vandenbroucke said on Tuesday, adding that he hopes to boost the vaccination rate.
He also clarified that the measure only applies to the Covid-19 vaccine, and that the intention is not that pharmacists will also be allowed to administer flu vaccines, for example.
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At least 4,000 pharmacists have already had the training to become vaccinators and mover than 1,200 pharmacies in Flanders are interested in the project, said Federal MP for the Flemish rightwing N-VA party Kathleen Depoorter, who is a pharmacist, on Flemish radio on Tuesday morning.
The training to become a vaccinator is an 8-hour course that has to be refreshed every three years, according to Depoorter. "After the training, the pharmacist will be able to save patients who react heavily to the vaccine. If something goes wrong, the pharmacist is trained to administer adrenaline, and in the meantime, the emergency services can be called."
Vandenbroucke stated that the intention is not to involve all pharmacies, but to allow the Regional Governments to determine to what extent they are going to count on pharmacists and to what extent they are going to keep vaccination centres open, for example.
However, various doctors' unions and associations find it problematic that pharmacists are allowed to carry out medical procedures, according to Roel Van Giel of Domus Medica.
Main interest is financial
"They receive eight hours of training, but a doctor has been trained for nine years to recognise side effects and to know how to react," he told VRT. "In the vaccination centres, doctors have been supervising for more than a year, and now all that is being thrown away."
Additionally, Domus Medica said that the pharmacists' main interest is financial, as vaccination is subject to payment by the government. "The pharmacists have been campaigning for this for a long time and this is, of course, about financing. This pits us against each other, even though we know how much we can achieve if we work together within the first-line zones."
While Van Giel agreed that GPs were heavily burdened during the entire epidemic, this is not the way to help them. "It is not that we as GPs want to do everything on our own, but everyone – GPs, nurses and pharmacists – needs to play their own part, and then we can handle it together."
