The absurd – but at the same time terrifying – situation took place in one of the pharmacies in Nowa Huta. Mr. Bartłomiej, the guardian of a horse suffering from peptic ulcer disease, wanted to fill a veterinary prescription there for medicines for the animal. The pharmacist decided to call the police – she assumed that the substance would be used to terminate a pregnancy. The man was taken to the police station where he spent several hours.
They wanted to buy medicine for the horse. The pharmacist assumed that it would be used for abortion
The incident was publicized by the Krakow judges via Twitter. “A friend’s husband went to the pharmacy to buy a veterinarian’s medicine for ulcers for the horse. Yes, yes – he has just been detained in a pharmacy by the Police for trying to induce a miscarriage. We have organized legal aid,” Dr. Maciej Czajka alarmed in the content of the post.
What happened? On Friday afternoon, March 17, Mr. Bartłomiej wanted to fill a prescription for medicines for an older horse suffering from ulcers:
“The horse weighs 700 kilograms, so the prescription was for 90 packs of 20 pills. The doctor warned us that the medicine contained a miscarriage-inducing substance and we might be asked why we needed it, but she said that then she would be called and verified. No we knew it would cause so much trouble,” explained his wife, Katarzyna, in Krakow’s “Wyborcza”.
On the way to the pharmacy, the animal’s guardian received a text message that the medicine would not be released – as the couple relates, the problem was that it contained a substance that could be used to medical abortion. Pharmacy employees were not even convinced by the fact that all the horse’s details were visible on the receipt, including the weight justifying the dosage. Mr. Bartłomiej was taken to the police station and his phone was taken away. After verification by the officers, it was confirmed that the document was issued legally, by a veterinarian.
Pharmacy manager: “This is not a phone call”
The journalists of “Wyborcza” succeeded contact the pharmacy manager, who was to refuse to hand over the substance and call the police. The pharmacist pointed out that “the police were called at the client’s request”and she didn’t want to sell medication to the horse handler because “they contain an ingredient I suspected was used for non-medical purposesHowever, she did not want to answer any more questions before consulting with lawyers and stated that “this is not a telephone call.”
The confusion also concerns the formal reason for which the services were officially notified. The officers claim that intervened because there was “suspected prescription falsification”, and after the doubts were clarified, the detainee was released. Mr. Bartłomiej maintains that the topic of forgery of prescriptions did not appear during the incident in the pharmacy, he spent several hours at the police station, and the horse still suffers as the couple has still not been issued the necessary medication.
