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GÖRAN HÄGGLUND

Apoteket sell-off delayed six months

The break-up of the Apoteket pharmacy monopoly will be pushed back another six months, according to Minister of Health Göran Hägglund.

Published: 5 June 2008 10:12 CEST

In a debate article published Thursday in the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper, Hägglund writes that the government is now working on a new law to allow outlets other than Apoteket to also sell medicine.

The new law is set to take effect on July 1st, 2009.

Earlier plans had called for the change to take effect at the end of 2008. The timetable had been criticized, not least by Apoteket’s competitors, who worried that they would have a hard time preparing to enter the Swedish market.

In order to ensure that Apoteket AB won’t be too dominant, the government wants to see off a number of the state-run pharmacy outlets throughout the country.

The creation of a new state-owned restructuring company set to take place at an Apoteket gathering on Thursday marks the first step toward the sell-off.

According to Hägglund, the chair of the new company will be Birgitta Böhlin, who currently heads the state-owned diversified services company Samhall AB.

RACISM

Pharmacy to launch plasters for darker skin

Swedish pharmacy chain Apoteket has told The Local it is hoping to offer a range of bandaids suitable for customers with darker skin tones by the end of the year as part of efforts to cut discrimination.

Published: 12 August 2015 16:10 CEST
Updated: 13 August 2015 08:04 CEST
Pharmacy to launch plasters for darker skin
An Apoteket store in Stockholm. Photo: Roger Vikström/TT
The company, which has 370 stores across Sweden said it had come up with the idea after talking to a number of Swedish anti-racism charities.
 
“We're looking at whether it's possible to have different coloured plasters but we haven't made a final decision on it yet,” Communications Director Eva Fernvall told The Local on Wednesday.
 
“It won't happen by next week but we hope to have something in place by the end of the year,” she added.
 
Apoteket faced criticism earlier this week by a Swedish blogger who runs the website Vardagsrasismen.nu (which translates as 'Everyday Racism').
 
Paula Dahlberg told public broadcaster Sveriges Radio on Monday that the pharmacy giant was contributing to racism by only offering shades of beige plasters (also called bandaids in some countries) on its shelves.
 
But Fernvall insisted that the company's decision to trial darker products was made long before the writer made the comments.
 
“The fact she said that demonstrates that there are heated discussions about immigrants and refugees right now,” she said, adding that the national chemist chain was committed to reducing discrimination.
 
She admitted that the plaster plan was “unusual” and noted that she had “never heard of anything like this in any other countries”.
 
Debates around immigration have intensified over the last 12 months in Sweden, which currently takes in more asylum seekers per capita than any other EU nation.
 
The nationalist Sweden Democrat party is the third largest in parliament after winning 12.9 percent of the vote in elections in September 2014 and is continuing to gain public support.
 
Sweden's government has said it is committed to maintaining the nation's reputation for tolerance and offering help to refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East and Africa. But it has welcomed efforts by the European Commission to encourage other European Union member states to take in a greater share of asylum seekers.