Sancti Spiritus Honors Pharmacy Workers, Those People Healers

It usually happens that patients, hopeful of healing or at least improving their condition, express their gratitude to the doctor who diagnosed them, to the laboratory worker who performed the complementary tests, to the nurse who medicated them, but overlook those anonymous employees of the local pharmacy where they buy the drugs that will return them the health.

Every November 22 Cuba celebrates the Day of the Pharmaceutical Worker marking the anniversary of the birth of revolutionary fighter Antonio Guiteras Olmes, one of the first profesional graduates of this speciality in the island.

Sancti Spíritus was granted the venue of the commemoration as an acknowledgement to the work carried out and to highlight “the stability in the outcomes, the quality in the attention to the population, the progressive recovery of the infrastructure of the pharmacies and the development of natural products, despite the existing difficulties with the supply of many drugs today”, said  Mailín Beltrán, head of pharmaceutical services of the Ministry of Public Health.

In this territory there are 180 pharmacies with about 1 080 workers. These facilities are located in the different districts, hospitals, and polyclinics. Martha María Castro, director of the Provincial Pharmacy and Optics Company, said that there are also two natural and traditional medicine laboratories in Sancti Spiritus, one in the capital city (Sancti Spiritus) and the other one in Yaguajay.