Ralph-Georg Laves didn’t let it go: On Tuesday afternoon, the 47-year-old pharmacist and owner of the Feilitzsch pharmacy at the Munich freedom even the first people willing to be vaccinated. The spade in the pharmacies is another offer to protect even more people from the corona virus with a vaccination. The Bundestag had already decided to take this step in December 2021 with an amendment to the Infection Protection Act.
According to Ralph-Georg Laves, it should be an additional, above all a “low-threshold offer”. “I’m convinced that we can reach a lot of people through our many friendly contacts,” he says. The willingness to be vaccinated has fallen in Munich in recent weeks. Nevertheless, according to Laves, there have already been a few callers who have asked whether vaccinations are given in the pharmacy. You could have made an appointment too. Peter Sandmann, Munich spokesman for the Bavarian Association of Pharmacists, also believes that the pharmacies reach people “that doctors cannot reach”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/.” In many cases, the pharmacies are also closer to the Place of residence than the respective general practitioner.” And the 55-year-old hopes the offer will work. “It’s worth trying.”
Training is a prerequisite for vaccination
The prerequisite for the pharmacies to be able to vaccinate is further training, which the Federal Chamber of Pharmacists has defined in a “curriculum with twelve further training hours”. In theory and practice. The theoretical part is about vaccination and vaccine. In the practical part, as Peter Sandmann explains, those who are interested can be trained, for example, in the Klinikum Rechts der Isar and also with doctors. A first aid course must also be proven.
The pharmacies need suitable rooms
Suitable rooms – that is also a requirement. They must have a high standard of hygiene. So, according to Sandmann, “to be easy to disinfect”. Not every pharmacy has these rooms, but the Feilitzsch pharmacy does. Laves has four rooms available. In one there are two vaccination booths, in the other the 15-minute “observation” after the vaccination is ensured. Room three: This is where the vaccine is prepared. In the fourth room, the vaccination documents are checked, such as the completed information sheets from the Robert Koch Institute. Pharmacist Laves and three employees want to attach great importance to the informational talks and the amnestic forms. “We will ask about everything concretely and intensively,” he says. He can vaccinate 40 to 60 people a day. “That would be a reward for the effort we’re putting in here.”
The Bavarian Association of General Practitioners is critical of the start of vaccinations in pharmacies. He is a “massive transgression of the limits of medical healing professions” and also associated with “unnecessary risks”. Sandmann believes that the risk, for example, of a rare anaphylactic reaction in allergy sufferers is “extremely calculable”. According to Peter Sandmann, the “wheel is not new”. In other countries like France, flu vaccinations have been available in pharmacies for a long time. Model tests have also been running in Germany for some time.
Vaccination pharmacies in Munich: www.impfen-in-apotheken.de