Health Minister Alexandru Rafila announces the distribution of potassium iodide pills: „This week we are launching the information campaign and, starting next week, the distribution to all those eligible, in principle up to the age of 40”

Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said Monday in Ploiesti that the campaign to distribute potassium iodide pills to the eligible population will begin next week.

„This week we are conducting the information campaign and, starting next week, the distribution to all those who are eligible, basically the population up to the age of 40,” Rafila said at a press conference.

The minister explained the need for the distribution of these pills by referring to the armed conflict in Ukraine, but also to the „collective memory” of the Chernobyl nuclear incident.

„It’s a question of the current context. You can see that a large-scale armed conflict is taking place in the immediate vicinity of Romania’s borders. Obviously, there is also a collective memory related to an incident that happened in 1986 on the territory of Ukraine and it is normal that the public health authorities react quickly and find a solution for any incident related to this nuclear area. Without alarming the public in any way, there is no need to do so, but we must provide the population with one of the elements that reduce the impact of a possible incident, not probable, I repeat, but possible. One of them is this protection or prevention which is only administered in the hours following such an incident, only on the recommendation of the public health authorities, and in order for this to be possible, the pills must be in the possession of the population”, said Alexandru Rafila.

The Minister of Health said on Saturday that the distribution of potassium iodide pills to the population could take two to three weeks, but said that this would be done only after very clear information of the citizens.

„We have to evaluate (the time period in which the pills will be distributed – editor’s note), because we are not talking about 100,000 or a million people who must receive these pills, we are talking about several million families and the time allocated to this distribution must be appropriate to the possibility of distributing them. We have in Romania about 10,000 family doctors, on the lists of these family doctors there are 16 million people and obviously it is necessary an interval of two to three weeks, probably, so that they can call all their patients in turn and be able to distribute these pills”, said Rafila on Saturday, during a press conference at the Victoria Palace.

He said this would be done only after very clear information of the population. The health minister also said that potassium iodide pills would be provided free of charge because it is a public health issue.

The Antibiotice Iasi factory produced 30 million potassium iodide pills. The vast majority of these have already been distributed to the warehouses of the country’s public health directorates.