The president of the Ordem dos Farmacêuticos (OF), Hélder Mota Filipe, warned in statements to Rádio Renascença that if the lack of medicines persists, Portugal “may face a public health crisis” and defended the creation of a strategic reserve of medicines, for the country to have “a set of medicines for public health or catastrophic reasons, when it really” needs them.

Asked about this alert the Minister of Health replied: "It is very important that we are alert and institutions, such as the Order of Pharmacists, have an obligation to convey this message, but the truth is that at the moment we have neither a rupture nor a risk of rupture, of any essential medicine”.

Commenting on statements by the minister, the president of pharmacists stated that, "probably, the truth lies between the rupture of 'stocks' and there being no shortage of medicines in the pharmacy".

“We have to be aware that when citizens go to the pharmacy, at this moment, in many cases, they have to go back there because the pharmacies do not have all the medicines available”, said Hélder Mota Filipe.

The Chairman said that what worries pharmacists "is the increase in frequency" with which people do not see guaranteed access to medicines, in some cases due to "a real rupture of 'stock' of medicines" and in other cases because the quantity available in the Portuguese market is not enough for our needs.