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The first pharmacy with social enterprise status in Romania, which is operating in Sangeorgiu de Mures, the Mures County, started being more and more accessed by people who are struggling, due to the involvement of over 20 partners in services' financing.
"Medicine and products sold in our pharmacy are not more expensive, nor are they cheaper than in other pharmacies, the Social Pharmacy being an independent unit which does not receive any subsidies or European funds from any institution and which received its certificate of social enterprise, issued by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection for respecting the social economic criteria, allocating minimum 90% of profit to establishing social goal and statutory reserve. (...) We started in June and were pleasantly surprised that this concept, unique in Romania, is a success. We now have 31 patients, many volunteers and 24 partners who are participating in maximizing the profit needed for social cases, by slashing the pharmacy's expenses," entrepreneur Marius Dumitrescu told AGERPRES.
He said that the pharmacy's slogan, "You are needed to do good!" presents the concept around which this idea was conceived, in the sense that everyone's help is needed in order to help as many social cases as possible.
"The Social Pharmacy opened in the largest village in Mures County, in Sangeorgiu de Mures. We waited two months, because when we opened we did not have any social cases, we were opened and ran as a normal pharmacy, until we made our goal more popular, and the money we received along the way we managed to help, so that the people began learning about what we wanted to do. We also have volunteers to deliver medicine to the people with social problems, to those that have a hard time moving around or those who cannot step outside during the heat wave. In the meantime we also brokered two donations of valuable medicine for the people who needed them. Social cases which benefit from gratuity are established by us, we do not wait for an investigation from the authorities, we make our own investigation. (...) Profit means the satisfaction of helping patients who are in difficult situations, and the social pharmacy is the first pharmacy in Romania which respects the principles of social economics and thus we manage to achieve daily the conversion of the financial profit into social profit. For starters, the Social Pharmacy supports the activities from the Home for the Elderly in Targu Mures, with whom it signed a partnership in this sense. The medicine needed for residents are ensured, for free, by the Social Pharmacy, and thus the Home makes important savings each month. Thus we could organize in July, for example, the grandparents' trip to Dedrad, in a cherry orchard," Marius Dumitrescu said.
The Social Pharmacy in Sangeorgiu de Mures will establish, as of September, an authorized center for testing the COVID-19 antigen, where low-income pensioners will benefit for free.
