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She admitted that the National Health Service had warned the pharmacies about the likelihood of more frequent malfunctions but this information did not help drugstores, which had to deal with frustrated patients, who could not get their e-prescriptions filled.

The pharmacists have been patient but this month the situation with the e-health system has gotten out of control, Ritene said. Due to the recurrent glitches in the system, the number of paper prescriptions has grown by 50 percent, she stressed.

Aiga Zarina, a board member of the Latvian Association of Pharmacies, said that every day there were situations at drugstores when people in pain could not get their prescriptions for painkillers filled because the e-health system was down. Both patients and pharmacists have become the hostages to the unreliable e-health system, she said.

The sub-committee on public health agreed to have an extraordinary meeting on the subject of the e-health system in July after the expiry of the deadline by which the Health Ministry had promised to eliminate the functionality problems. At the same time, doubts were raised about the ability of lawmakers to actually influence the developments concerning the e-health system.

Andrejs Pantelejevs, the head of the health minister's office, said that the political position in the matter was perfectly clear and the e-health system was to be functioning impeccably in two months at most.

As reported, Latvian Health Minister Anda Caksa (Greens/Farmers) promised in early May that the e-health system will turn "from an obstacle into an asset" in two months. She said she was not happy with the speed of the e-health system, especially considering that four months had already passed since the use of the new system became mandatory.

In mid-May the minister said on the public Latvian Television that international experts had found the error in one of the e-health system's modules that was slowing down the entire system but it would take two months to fix the bug.