Carcassonne. 100% of the city’s pharmacies on strike yesterday

Anyone walking around town yesterday had every chance of coming across pharmacies displaying clauses. And for good reason: the national movement calling for a pharmacists’ strike was extremely well followed. It’s even difficult to do better: 100% of Carcassonne pharmacies were mobilized. Around twenty in total, three of them having been requisitioned but only to honor two very specific types of prescriptions: those delivered this Thursday, and those relating to the“absolute emergency”. But even in these pharmacies which remained open, the discontent of the profession was in everyone’s minds.

“The population first supported us on social networks, via messages of sympathy”we explain at the pharmacy in the hamlet of Montredon, requisitioned. “But above all, the patients we welcomed this Thursday morning are totally with us. Even if for one day, our movement is a Source of some constraints for them, they realize that in ten years, pharmacies will experience the same situation as doctors today. Namely massive desertification, linked to mass closures of pharmacies.

“Inflation affects us like everyone else”recalls Aude pharmacist Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France (FSPF). “The difference is that we are subject to regulated prices. When charges increase and we cannot pass them on to prices…” An untenable situation and already a Source, according to the manager, of pharmacy closures, particularly in Carcassonne.

Like their other Aude colleagues, the Carcassonne strikers mostly went to demonstrate in Toulouse or Montpellier. But at the Montredon pharmacy, the requisitioned professionals felt that they also had a role to play outside the processions, in contact with the patient population: “We need to mark the occasion, but we also need to explain to people why we are mobilizing”.