Price of paracetemol in Spain

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Stevemul
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Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Stevemul » Mon Mar 05, 2018 5:47 pm

I believe that Paracetemol can only be purchased in Pharmacies in Spain.
A pack of 20 x 500mg generic tablets cost me €4 today in a Nerja Pharmacy.
Thats over 10x the cost of an equivalent pack in a UK Supermarket!

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country boy
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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby country boy » Mon Mar 05, 2018 6:03 pm

It only costs me €2.65 for 40x1000mg in Pizarra.

Wanna buy some? :lolno:

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Wicksey » Tue Mar 06, 2018 11:06 am

That's right, unlike the UK you cannot buy anything like that from anywhere other than a farmacia. I find the Nerja ones can be expensive (perhaps as it's a more touristy area??) and they always try to sell you the most pricey ones. I usually ask if they have a cheaper variety. (I'm sure I have bought them cheaper but the last lot were on prescription so only cost a few cents.)

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Pamela1 » Tue Mar 06, 2018 2:05 pm

My daughter in law works for a well known pharmacy in a Uk Suppermarket and i was asking her why some are running at a loss...She told me that apart from prescriptions and some items which may not be stocked by the suppermarket people generally just buy their medicine from the suppermarket shelf...
I am all for competition which keeps prices low but i do admire the fact that Spain has looked after their pharmacies by not allowing Supermarkets to take over..
Last edited by Pamela1 on Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby maureenscot » Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:46 pm

Paid 19p today in Lidl UK. Maybe they will be cheaper in Lidl Spain

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby El Cid » Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:52 pm

If you read the earlier posts, you will see that drugs are not available in supermarkets, only in pharmacies.

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Stevemul » Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:33 pm

Pamela1 wrote:My daughter in law works for a well known pharmacy in a Uk Suppermarket and i was asking her why some are running at a loss...She told me that apart from prescriptions and some items which may not be stocked by the suppermarket people generally just buy their medicine from the suppermarket shelf...
I am all for competion which keeps prices low but i do admire the fact that Spain has looked after their pharmacy's by not allowing Suppermarkets to take over..

I've yet to meet a poor pharmacist!

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby northandsouth » Tue Mar 06, 2018 7:19 pm

When we lived in Estepona some Farmacias only sold packs of paracetamol in 1000mg (1gram) tablets, (if you wanted 500mg you snapped them in half) but they were very very cheap around €2.00 for 40 as country boy said earlier.
In the UK now and yes you can buy them in supermarkets normally only 400mg up to 600mg, I've never seen any higher dosage than that here. However, you can only buy one small pack at a time. Them's the rules :?

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Pamela1 » Tue Mar 06, 2018 7:34 pm

Stevemul. Yes Pharmacists do get paid well but i'd hope to be paid well if i'd put in the education to gain a Pharmacists licence. However my post wasn't about Pharmacists, it was about Pharmacies.
Last edited by Pamela1 on Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby El Cid » Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:10 pm

One of the reasons they probably don’t like the large dose pills is that Paracetamol overdoses are really serious and life threatening.

It’s quite difficult to kill yourself with Aspirin but Paracetamol is potentially very bad. The problem is that many other proprietary medicines contain Paracetamol, particularly cold remedies, so that accidental overdoses are very common. Left untreated too long total liver failure can result which can result in death.

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby katy » Tue Mar 06, 2018 10:53 pm

Good point Sid. Takes a very low dose to cause irreversible liver failure. Some frail and elderly are advised to only take one 500mg. Someone left Ibuprofen at our home in Spain. I assumed they were just the same as in UK and didn't look at the packet, but they were 1000mg I took two more around 6 hours later and was quite ill.

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Pamela1 » Tue Mar 06, 2018 11:59 pm

What amazes me is that instructions on electrical items come in many different languages and yet medicine dosen't. Dosage for adults and kids should be in all languages..Ok so the leaflet might be a mile long but the answer would be for the Pharmacy to print off a copy in the language of the sick person so that they are aware of dosage and any potentially serious side effects. That is the one thing i thought the EU would have addressed in their book of rules!!

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby GerryinCajiz » Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:13 pm

Not all electrical items have multi lingual instructions, it depends on the targeted consumers/distribution area. Items made solely for Spain would have instructions in Spanish only. Likewise for medicines, if I need any clarification on dosage/usage I ask the pharmacist or go online and get the prospectus in English. Medicines from Spanish pharmacies are targeted at Spanish speaking people.

I have not seen any multilingual instructions on UK dispensed medicines!
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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby chrissiehope » Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:50 pm

Must be one of the few things that aren't in multiple languages here ;-)
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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby Pamela1 » Thu Mar 08, 2018 9:15 am

GerryinCajiz wrote://


I have not seen any multilingual instructions on UK dispensed medicines!
My post wasn't just referring to Spain

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby GerryinCajiz » Thu Mar 08, 2018 2:31 pm

I accept that, I was just drawing a comparison that I know of, I have no experience of medicines in the rest of Europe.
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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby elusive » Fri Mar 09, 2018 6:03 pm

I do find it strange how you cant buy box standard meds like asprin etc in a supermarket yet i can go into a chemist and buy tram adol OTC no questions asked. It still amazes me the amount of chemists you find in towns and i guess they are protecting them but then that does keep the prices high as they were in the uk before supermarkets etc started selling meds. i always have to buy a stash in either gib or the U.k but especially in gib all the morrisons own is sold out and you have to pay pounds more for the exact same tablets because they are branded.thats a big rip off issue with the U.k

Instructions are for the target audience.we have bought electrical things with instructions in everything but english. because they dont sell them in the u.k.same with meds.Although i dont understand why brands have different names depending on what country they are been sold in. Such as cordysol (sp) in the u.k and paradontax in spain.takes forever to work out and surely it would be far cheaper for the makers to keep the same packaging

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby chrissiehope » Sat Mar 10, 2018 12:06 am

Most supermarkets in UK restrict the purchase of paracetemol & ibuprofen to a max of 2 packs (of approx 16 tabs) per person/purchase of either 2 the same or one of each
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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby olive » Sat Mar 10, 2018 8:57 am

We havent bought any paracetamol for years. We inherited enough to last us a 1000 years when an uncle in law died. The cupboard was stuffed with repeat prescriptions that werent ever used just put away by carers. That is certainly an area of the NHS that needs reviewing.

My elderly ,very mobile dad suffers from a painful but thankfully only occasional foot problem . At one stage his doctor prescribed taking EIGHT 500 mg paracetamols in order to get off to sleep. As soon as I found out I advised him against for the liver failure reason cited above. I thought it must have been a mistake but my brother actually saw the paperwork. When I stayed with him next, i suggested he wore slippers after showering and before bed as that was the only time he wasnt supporting his arches. That has reduced the occurrence and a solpadene usually does the trick.

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Re: Price of paracetemol in Spain

Postby elusive » Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:57 am

chrissiehope wrote:Most supermarkets in UK restrict the purchase of paracetemol & ibuprofen to a max of 2 packs (of approx 16 tabs) per person/purchase of either 2 the same or one of each
Yeah its the law Pretty stupid really .just go into the shop next door or back around ala morrisons gib. Pretty pointless

8 paracetamol?!!! Heck he would get off to sleep and prob not wake up. Heard some many stories of ppl getting hooked because drs over prescribed. A family member has been on anti depressents for something stupid like 20 years.dr never bothers to look at whether he actually needs them anymore and another ended up addicted to painkillers and had to take methodone after the dr kept giving them prescriptions.


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