Lake Co. pharmacy that offers no cost medicine to people in want loses funding

LAKE COUNTY, Ohio — A Lake County plan that saves life will have to shut its doorways at the finish of September because of to lack of funding.

Joel Lucia is the president and founder of the nonprofit business Prescription Help Plan that’s situated in Harmony Township.

“We are a licensed pharmacy. We started this in 2008. I was well being commissioner for the Lake County Wellbeing District. All this medicine we have in this article will come from a pharmacy who products and services nursing homes. We also get it from Americare and Direct Aid,” Lucia reported.

The pharmacy receives the excessive medication and then ships it out to people’s homes, at a cost of $10 for the delivery price, but the 84-yr-previous said if individuals simply cannot manage it, he just provides it for cost-free.

“These folks are on social security. The persons we are serving are not the tremendous wealthy people. These are men and women who have to have help,” he mentioned. “I’m providing medicine, individually, to these residences and these are not folks who are using benefit of the condition these are men and women that want support they have to have the medication to keep alive and it breaks my heart.”

The prescriptions are for most cancers, diabetes, heart issues and so a lot additional. The only medicine the pharmacy does not have is narcotics. It serves additional than 700 persons throughout Lake County and bordering spots each 12 months.

Wealthy Semtelli is a certified pharmacist who has worked at the pharmacy considering the fact that it opened its doors. He explained he begun doing the job there for the reason that he saw the dim side of pharmaceuticals when clients could not pay for the prescriptions they desired.

“That’s the saddest thing when you get another person on social safety, on a preset revenue, and you convey to them their prescription is going to be $190 and they just stare at you and say, ‘I can not do that. I don’t have that.’”

But if Lucia simply cannot secure funding, the doorways of the group will shut at the close of September and the medication will have to be wrecked.

“We just shed our funding,” he stated.

The company that experienced promised the $60,000 just about every year for the following 3 several years advised Lucia it could no lengthier find the money for it.

Lucia explained he has fatigued his alternatives.

“We attempted to go again to the Lake County Wellness District wherever we began, we attempted the Board of County Commissioners, we experimented with Dan Troy, our consultant, and we just can’t get funding,” reported Lucia.

It is a challenging pill to swallow for him and his personnel.

“The people today that make the selections on what they are going to fund, we kind of get to the base of the list there, and to me, it’s pretty quick sighted,” said Semtelli. “There’s no question in my brain someone will die mainly because of this.”

Lucia is keeping out hope that a person, someplace will aid fund the subsequent year.

“For $60,000, we will offer $600,000 or $700,000 for medication for the group,” he explained. “There is no software, no application, that can match what we can do dollar for dollar, so I’m hoping another person will appear by within just the upcoming month and enable fund us at the very least for a person year.”

Information 5 achieved out to the Lake County Health and fitness District for remark but has not read again.