The pharmacies are not state-owned in Denmark and in Finland

Dear Editor,

Lopez Vila et al. (2023) have conducted a quantitative classification of OTC medicine regulations in 30 European countries. This is an important pharmaceutical policy topic, and we want to congratulate the authors for conducting such a wide analysis from many countries. The authors have utilised national legislations, reports from international organisations, and the existent literature from these 30 countries. The task to search and utilise such data is time-consuming and difficult, and the interpretations may vary depending on the literature found. In this case, the authors have ended up with an incorrect conclusion.

The authors state that

The ownership of pharmacies is mainly private in 26 of the countries studied. Only in Denmark, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Finland countries, where the ownership of pharmacy retail is limited to the state, in other words, the owner is the state, and the state is the one that issues concessions of the pharmacies to pharmacists. (2023, p. 4)

This statement is not true – at least in relation to Finland and Denmark. In both of these countries, the medicine agency grants the licence to individual pharmacists which means that pharmacies are privately owned in these countries with the exception of two university-owned pharmacies in Finland. The authors refer to the WHO report (World Health Organization, 2019), where it is explicitly stated that for example, in Finland the licence for a pharmacy is granted by the Finnish Medicine Agency, to a specified individual (p. 27). Interpretation that the pharmacies would be state-owned are, thus, incorrect.

We want to make this clarification of the pharmacy systems on behalf of our countries and encourage the authors to check the situation also in Luxemburg and Slovenia.

Respectfully,

Katri Hämeen-Anttila and Anna Birna Almarsdóttir.