Vol. 475 No. 7
56 Mr. Gregory asked the Minister for Health, further to his reply to Parliamentary Question No. 55 of 20 February 1997, if he will select postal district eight on a pilot basis to operate a scheme which will ensure that each pharmacy in that district will dispense methadone to an equal number of clients from the General Medical Service and from general practitioners on a private basis in order to alleviate the impact on any one area. [5629/97]
Limerick East): Methadone can be prescribed through the General Medical Services for medical card holders, or on a private prescription for those attending a general practitioner on a private basis. At present it is not necessary to designate the name of a pharmacy on the prescription and any pharmacist can dispense methadone on foot of a properly presented prescription.
The Eastern Health Board is in the process of implementing a number of Methadone Protocol schemes, where patients are provided with treatment cards which contain the name of the doctor and the name of the pharmacist who are dealing with that patient. In this way the board is working towards involving a number of additional doctors and pharmacists in the provision of services to drug misusers. At present just over 300 people have been provided with these treatment cards and are being treated by 35 general practitioners in 42 pharmacies, under these schemes.
My Department will consult with the Eastern Health Board on the feasibility of carrying out a pilot scheme in postal district 8. However, under such schemes, treatment and dispensing of methadone in any given area will only be to people living within that specific catchment area. Therefore, private patients, or indeed General Medical Services patients from other postal districts, may continue to frequent a particular pharmacy in that area in large numbers, so until such time as the Methadone Protocol Scheme extends city-wide, with all persons holding treatment cards and attending local facilities, the problems to which the Deputy refers will not be alleviated.
It is intended to provided treatment cards to all drug misusers who come into contact with the Eastern Health Board services, or to the patients of general practitioners who are registered on the central treatment list. This scheme will take time to be implemented in a properly controlled fashion, but it is expected that significant progress will be made on its implementation during 1997 and that all persons on the central treatment list, over 1,900 at present, and others who come into contact with services during 1997 will be provided with such a card and, therefore, have their local pharmacy designated to dispense.
In its policy document on drug abuse, which was published in October 1996, the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland has encouraged all pharmacists to participate in methadone dispensing and that dispensing of methadone should ideally be for patients who come from the local community where the prescriber should be a local general practitioner or from the drug clinic in the area. It has also recommended that pharmacists should limit the number of patients to whom they will dispense and that patients should be on the central treatment list. I welcome these recommendations which strongly endorse national policy and the strategy being implemented by the Eastern Health Board.
