On the second day after the abolition of paper prescriptions for antibiotics and antidiabetic drugs, the head of the Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA), Dr Ivan Madjarov, demanded that electronic prescriptions for antibiotics and diabetes drugs be stopped immediately. 

The BMA is receiving a large number of reports from across Bulgaria that pharmacies are refusing to sell patients antibiotics prescribed electronically, saying patients must return to their GP to get a prescription for another antibiotic because the one originally prescribed was not available, journalist Elena Beykova reports. 

The union said the drugs in question were available in the network. According to the doctors, what is happening means that with paper prescriptions, pharmacists are massively dispensing whatever they decide, not whatever is prescribed. Health Minister Hristo Hinkov said that there would be no return to paper prescriptions and that in the absence of the necessary drugs in one pharmacy they should be sought in another.