The Irish Pharmaceutical Union quoted in their news update of May 29,”The IPU has teamed up with the Crisis Pregnancy Programme and the HSE to provide information to the public on the appropriate use of Emergency Hormonal Contraception(EHC) and to highlight its availability from pharmacies without a prescription. The campaign also aims to increase risk awareness of unplanned pregnancy among men and women.”

Pharmacists are calling for tighter controls to stop the over-prescribing of antibiotics.

In the aftermath of European findings that a flu vaccine administered in Ireland last year is not suitable for children, the Irish Pharmaceutical Union has said the risk presented by swine flu was greater than that presented by the drug.

Pharmacists are meeting the Minister for Health today to hammer out a deal to provide the winter flu vaccine from pharmacies.

A NATIONWIDE needle exchange service for drug addicts — funded by an Elton John charity — has still not been set up, a year and a half after it was announced.

GARDAÍ will start patrolling the HSE’s temporary pharmacies from today amid allegations that protesting pharmacists were intimidating staff at the sites.

HERE we go again. Would the Minister for Health and the Irish Pharmaceutical Union ever stop playing hardball with sick people’s lives? Time is running out in the latest stand-off.

THE richest and the poorest are the heaviest users of sedatives, tranquillisers and anti-depressants, according to a national survey.

THE Health Service Executive has warned that medicine prices will rise by around 9% when it restores a controversial drugs payment scheme next month.

I RECEIVED my HSE payment the other day — it was 9% (€6,500) down on what it should have been. This doesn’t reflect the full effect of the HSE cuts.

PHARMACY workers are being used as pawns by their employers to advance their dispute with the Health Service Executive, the Mandate union claimed yesterday.

THE Competition Authority has denied it was tipped off by the Health Service Executive about the controversial decision taken by pharmacists to withdraw from the methadone scheme.

A pharmacist today won a High Court injunction to stop the Health Service Executive enforcing a cut in its contractual payments for prescription medication.

DESPITE a threat by pharmacists to withdraw from the community drugs scheme, no pharmacist has given notice of their intention to quit to the Health Service Executive (HSE).

MANY pharmacies were shut for most of the day yesterday when more than 1,000 members of the Irish Pharmaceutical Union attended an emergency meeting in Dublin to discuss the Health Service Executive’s cost-cutting measures.

An emergency meeting of the Irish Pharmaceutical Union takes place today over a controversial cost-cutting plan amid fears of widespread disruption to services.

The Mandate trade union has expressed serious concern about the possibility of job losses in the pharmacy sector.

Pharmacists have said that they are not overreacting to a new HSE plan which reduces the amount of money paid to them.

MUCH has been said and written about the dispute between the HSE and the pharmacists and not all has been useful or illuminating.

Taoiseach bertie Ahern has today urged the HSE and the Irish Pharmaceutical Union to resolve their dispute over the price paid for drugs distributed under the medical card scheme.

ALCOHOL combined with cold and flu remedies is a common cocktail for many adults this time of year.

THREE cocaine clinics due to open this month have been delayed due to a recent industrial relations dispute, it emerged yesterday.

More than 20 pharmacies have claimed they will suffer annual losses of more than €2m if the HSE proceeds with plans to reduce amounts paid to them for dispensing medicines to some members of the public for free.

Pharmacies in Dublin and Wicklow are set to resume providing methadone to heroin addicts today.

The Irish Pharmaceutical Union is today calling on its members to resume methadone provision to patients.

LOCAL drug taskforces have warned pharmacists that their protest would prove counter-productive if they continued to put methadone patients at serious risk of returning to their heroin addiction.

A NUMBER of pharmacists who have withdrawn from the methadone treatment scheme were yesterday ordered to appear before a Competition Authority inquiry into a possible breach of competition law.

Pharmacists should not make recovering drug addicts suffer in their dispute over fees with the Health Service Executive, the Taoiseach told the Dáil today.

The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has angrily called on pharmacists to resume distributing methadone to heroin addicts.

THE National Implementation Body has received a formal request from the Irish Pharmaceutical Union to intervene in its increasingly acrimonious row with the Health Service Executive over payments.

ANY person trying to shake off the chains of an addiction is involved in a life or death challenge.

Drugs campaigners today unleashed a blistering attack on pharmacists who are refusing to give methadone to thousands of recovering heroin addicts.

The HSE and the Irish Pharmaceutical Union are being accused of using drug addicts as a bargaining chip in their dispute over medicine prices.

One hundred and forty pharmacists are ceasing to provide methadone to former drug addicts from this morning as part of a dispute with the HSE.

PHARMACISTS earned figures ranging from €4,000 to €4 million last year under drug reimbursement schemes.

ONE-IN-FOUR people over the age of 50 arrive in accident and emergency departments with insufficient knowledge of their medical condition and medication, an A&E consultant warned yesterday.

The Health Service Executive is holding talks with pharmacists today in an effort to resolve a row over the medical card scheme.

Following a meeting in Cork on Thursday evening, more than 140 local pharmacists agreed to stop dispensing drugs on the Drug Payment Scheme and General Medical Scheme after December 1, if the Health Service Executive does not reverse its decision to cut the prices it pays for the drugs.

PHARMACISTS in Cork are to cease dispensing drugs to medical card holders after December 1.

IRELAND tops the European rankings for complaints of ailments, new research reveals.

THE huge increase in the HSE’s drug bill — jumping from €332 million in 1997 to €1.6 billion last year — is staggering and unsustainable.

PHARMACIES and drugs companies have claimed a decision by the Health Service Executive to slash the mark-up paid for medicines will put many community pharmacists out of business.

The body representing pharmacies around Ireland is warning about the potential ill effects of misusing over-the-counter painkillers.

One of the country's leading pharmacists today urged a re-think on how some big brand painkillers are sold as concerns mount about legal drug abuse.