In Brussels, Belgium, Fatima’s pharmacy has become a mini vaccination centre. Fatima is one of the first community pharmacists in Belgium allowed to administer vaccines in the pharmacy as part of a local pilot projec. And the advantage is that she knows the in-habitants of her neighbourhood very well. She discusses, reassures and explains how the vaccine works. Without obligation. And it works!

"People who do not speak French come to us spontaneously," says Fatima Zohra Khayar. She believes that her "triple hat", as a local pharmacist, an Arabic-speaker of Moroccan origin and a health specialist, is reassuring to her customers. “They come looking for in-formation because they read and hear a lot of fake news. “I tell them that for some of them vaccination is vital. That they could end up in intensive care tomorrow.

According to Fatima, the young people on their side “do not always understand why they have to be vaccinated”. Several factors contribute to this. “They are not sick. But for them, we only take medicine when we are sick. I make them understand that they are doing a service to their parents, their grandparents. They understand that it is something serious, but not necessarily that it can also come from them”. And then there is always the fake news. “They are afraid of so-called dangerous substances, they fear for their fertility, for not having children…”

The pharmacy enabled the vaccination of 56 people in a single day, September 17. "Word of mouth goes very quickly," pleads the owner of the pharmacy. “We go through the door, we ask a question, we decide. Ther is no need to put on a big show.

Paolo Betti, pharmacist and president of Federfarma Trento (Italy), tells us this story, as he recently saved the life of a 52-year-old colleague thanks to the timely use of a semi-automatic defibrillator.

“It was early in the morning about ten days ago - recalls Betti - and we had already started administering the antigen tests when my colleague, a 52-year-old collaborator who is my right-arm in the pharmacy, looked at me and said: “Paolo I think I'm fainting”. I was next to her and I took her in my arms, laying her on the floor. I had thought of a drop in blood pressure, among other things also because she is a healthy person, who eats the vegetables from her garden, does not smoke and does not drink. But instead I didn't feel her heart beating anymore, and she didn't wake up. Thank God we had followed a project of the Province of Trento which had supplied a defibrillator to pharmacies that wanted to have it, but which I had never used until then. When I saw that the heartbeat was gone and there was no breathing, I started heart massage and I used the defibrillator, waiting for help”.

Betti, still moved, is keen to clarify that “thanks to the defibrillator but also to a series of coincidences” (the pharmacist did not fall and did not hit her head, the ambulances arrived in a very short time) they ensured prompt help and “we were able to save her life”. A dramatic experience: “Doing a heart massage on a mannequin is one thing, doing it on a beloved one is completely different. But luckily we saved her and, thanks to such an early intervention, I can say that she is responding well to treatment”.