Angeldimana

Hi All,

Any advice for this one?

I picked my mum up last night from the airport and when we got back home and she unpacked her case, she realised that she had left some of her medication at home.
They are pills for her diabetes and prevents eye deterioration.

She has a copy prescription with her so i was going to call up at the pharmacy later and see if they have them.

I presume she'l have to pay for them here?

HADENOUGHPIZZA

Depends on the pharmacist , they should not refuse to dispense them but you may have to pay . If they do refuse to give her the medicine explain to your GP and he can give you a prescrition

Angeldimana

All sorted,

Turns out they are only a mix of vitamins with a supplement in. The pharmacist had a similar type and sold them to us for €15.00.

Lorna at Vicenza

Good stuff, but vitamins are not cheap here are they.

I can't remember the difference in price between the folic acid sold here and the box I picked up for about 2 quid in the UK - but it was enormous.

Angeldimana

Yeah, expensive in comparison.

The lady at the pharmacist ask how much we paid for the same product in the UK and was very surprised to find out that they were covered as 'free of charge' under my mum's prescription.

Patty

I'll never understand why Chemists are so exorbitantly expensive over here.
I take a few supplements for osteo-arthritis and I would never in a million years buy them over here. Same goes for all the normal things like paracetomol, flu medicine, creams etc - they always cost the earth over here. I know that here in Piemonte there are quite a few people that go over to France to buy stuff.

Lorna at Vicenza

I think a lot of medicines here are still patented so can't be made and sold cheaper by other companies.
It's better than it was though now that some cheaper versions of the same medicine are available. I still see plenty of folk in the chemist saying that they don't want the generic version, only the original. They think the generic brand one won't work.

Twinkle Canelli

I have to say, I would always recommend getting exactly the same brand of drugs that you have taken before and not a generic alternative. My husband had a stroke in January of last year in Abu Dhabi. In the summer he came back to Italy and was persuaded to have an alternative brand of drugs with absolutely disastrous consequences. It affected his ability to work and he subsequently lost his job and his confidence. It's not worth risking your health just to save a few euros.

Marocco

Lack of competition. It's much more difficult to open up a pharmacy in Italy than in the UK.

Lorna at Vicenza

I didn't know that could happen.

Dr once gave me a prescription. The chemist asked if I wanted the exact brand on the prescription or the generic one. I hadn't ever taken either of them before so I don't suppose it would have made a difference.

37100

I would have thought that Twinkle's prescription was a different drug and not the equivalent generic of the original one. The doctors in the UK have done that to my mum as well. Different hospitals use different drugs and they give different results. Mum's in a bit of a tizzy at the moment because the NHS has stopped providing one of her drugs.

As you know, a generic has the same composition as the branded version who's patent has expired. That said, I'm never sure whether to accept the generic or not. What do others do?

Lorna at Vicenza

I took the generic one. It worked.

Garbatellamike

I took the generic option this weekend with anti-inflammatories and they worked fine.

As an aside, I don't know about the rest of Italy but in Rome it can't be difficult to open a Pharmacy as there are 3 on just about every street around me

Lorna at Vicenza

I remember coming to Italy and realising that there was a bar, a bank and a chemist on every street in town.

There is something about pharmacies here though and lines of succession or whatever, though I don't know exactly how it works.

I very rarely see an empty chemist and I'm convinced that most Italians are hypochondriacs.

duffer

Either that or it's because the chemist have fought tooth and nail to oppose anything against their own interests, whether it's permission for new chemists to open up in the same area or the sale of certain medicines at supermarkets. It's only recently that supermarkets have been allowed to sell over the counter medicine.

Have you seen the price of formula milk at chemists?