October 7, 2020 – One writer’s adventure through the Croatian health system, trying to get something everyone keeps telling her she should get – a flu shot!
I’ve never had a flu shot in my life, not even after a friend of mine died after contracting flu at the age of 32. I don’t have a valid explanation as to why I didn’t do it, but in 2020 it’s quite obvious that getting a flu shot is a public service we should all take advantage of, if at all possible. We’re also being told that by the Croatian media and even some epidemiologists, as both the media and doctors have spent some time already inviting everyone to get a flu shot this year.
We know the number of doses of the vaccine which have been ordered. Some articles have appeared which describe the process of getting a vaccine in detail: if you’re a chronically ill patient in a high-risk group, your LOM (liječnik obiteljske medicine, general practitioner, your family doctor you turn to for basic medical stuff like getting your prescriptions in the Croatian system) will provide you with the vaccine. Others will have to buy it, or, possibly, get the shot at their local institute of public health. The articles and all public communication regarding the flu vaccine this year have the same message: vaccinations will start on October 15th, so get your dose of the vaccine on time.
So, on October 1st, being the nerd that I am, I contacted my LOM, asking questions about the vaccine for myself and my partner. I’m thankfully not high-risk, but he is. The doctor tells me that they don’t have the vaccine yet and they don’t know when they will get it. When they eventually get it, they will only be providing the vaccine to those who have already been vaccinated there, as they will get a very limited number of doses. She also informed me that others will be able to get their shot free at the institute of public health and that more information will become available through the media (yes, even the doctors working with patients every day are fully expecting to learn the new information in the media!)
OK, we won’t be able to get it through them, we’ll just either buy it or go to Mirogojska (that’s where the public health place in Zagreb is, and coincidentally, so is the cemetery), no big deal.
Yesterday I read a tweet by a guy I know about how he’d secured the flu shots for himself, his family and his employees (he owns a business). I asked him what he did, and how was that possible, and he explained that he’d put his needs on a waiting list in a pharmacy. That same day, in a Facebook post by a friend I discovered that she’d already purchased the vaccine for her family, and has already had it administered! I went to my neighbourhood pharmacy, where they informed me that yes, they had, in fact, already received the first batch of vaccines, they’d sold the entire batch of the Influvac Tetra vaccine they were allotted, they had no idea when the next batch is coming or how many doses they would receive, but she’d put me on the waiting list. The waiting list is, as you can imagine, a nightmare: the number of people on it is almost double than the last batch of the vaccine! But, she helpfully told me, you know, you can put your name on a few more pharmacy’s waiting lists, to improve your chances of getting the vaccine.
Now, I don’t want to be too harsh, but I do want to be harsh: that is insanity!
In this day and age, when we know we have an online system (which has been used, A LOT, this year, to make sure the people in self-isolation aren’t coming to pharmacies), it would be trivial to write the code which would allow me to pre-register for the vaccine on my own, or for the elderly and less computer-savvy to do it through their LOMs or in the pharmacies. But, no, I have to call as many local pharmacies as possible, to get my name on their waiting lists, where there are numerous other people on the list before me in all of those pharmacies, and where we don’t know if we’ll be able to get the vaccine which was already being sold, which wasn’t publicly disclosed, and is currently sold out and there might or might not be any more doses in Croatia to be purchased at all!
(I’ve decided to omit some less important points for this story, such as the fact that the second batch of the vaccine might or might not be the same kind or the whole mess they’ve managed to create around whether you need a prescription by your doctor to get the shot, as it would complicate the story to the point where nobody would read it to the end).
It’s not easy being a responsible citizen of Croatia, anyone who’s ever lived here will confirm that. The Government and the systems in place make it very difficult to obey all the laws and rules and regulations and still get anything done (don’t even get me started on what it’s like to get a builder’s permit…) But, in 2020, during the global pandemic and the anti-vax pandemic, while the experts are pleading with the public to get their flu shot this year, there’s really no justification for making it so freaking difficult for responsible people to get their shots! And, besides, doesn’t it make one wonder what things will look like once we finally get the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine? Will it be any easier to get for those of us who will opt to get vaccinated?
