Sunday Lifelines: The Maltese Pharmacies Keeping the Islands Healthy on 28 September 2025

Sunday morning, 28 September 2025, and while much of Malta still smells of last-night’s fenkata and the church bells are warming up for the 9 a.m. mass, a small neon-green cross flickers alive on Triq il-Wied, Birkirkara. Inside, pharmacist Claire Pace is already balancing two phones, a teething baby in a car seat, and a pensioner who swears the humidity is “killing my knees”. Claire is one of 14 duty chemists island-wide whose doors stay open today, a roster quietly published every quarter by the Malta Chamber of Pharmacists and bookmarked by anyone who has ever woken up to a child with fever or a dog that ate a lace doily.

In Malta, the “farmacy tal-għada” is more than a convenience; it is a cultural safety-net woven by post-war baby-boom mothers who would rather walk barefoot to Ħamrun than see a clinic bill. Sunday trading laws still keep most shops shuttered, but pharmacies have been exempt since 1963, when a bout of polio convinced authorities that illness keeps no timetable. The result is a uniquely Maltese ritual: families plotting the quickest route between parish and prescription, swapping tips on which chemist still stocks the French cough syrup that actually works.

Today’s list reads like a hop-on-hop-off tour of the archipelago: Valletta’s 24-hour Sta. Lucia outlet for cruise-ship passengers who forgot their blood-pressure tablets; a tiny Sliema branch wedged between a sushi bar and a pastizzeria where English expats queue for melatonin; the Qormi store whose owner, 72-year-old Ġużeppi, refuses to install barcode readers because “the Good Lord gave me fingers”. Gozo chips in with three dispensaries, vital for villagers who otherwise face a €20 taxi to the hospital after dusk.

Claire’s first crisis arrives before the kettle boils: a Romanian builder with grout in his eye. While she flushes the cornea with saline, her assistant, 19-year-old Maria, fields a call from a panicked bride whose mother-in-law has misplaced her diuretics three hours before the Żejtun wedding. By law, duty chemists can sell only emergency packs—three days’ supply—and must log every transaction with the patient’s ID. The computerised register, introduced in 2019, now talks directly to Mater Dei’s A&E, cutting weekend overdoses by 18 %, officials say.

Yet the human element still trumps algorithms. Claire keeps a handwritten “frequent flyers” card deck: Ms. Cardona from Balzan whose insulin pens must stay cold; little Jake who needs hypoallergenic formula that costs more than his parents’ weekly rent. “We’re the keepers of secrets,” Claire smiles, sliding a discreet morning-after pill into a plain paper bag. “Confession for the body, not just the soul.”

Economically, Sunday shifts are a bittersweet pill. The government pays each chemist €450 per opening, but footfall is unpredictable. During last June’s heatwave, Claire sold 200 bottles of paediatric electrolytes before noon; today she might barely cover the air-conditioning. Still, the goodwill is priceless. “My father opened on Sundays during the 1987 ferry strike,” she recalls. “People still thank us with a tray of imqaret at Christmas.”

By 6 p.m., the queue has thinned. Claire locks up, leaves the after-hours bell on, and posts tomorrow’s rota to the pharmacy’s 3,400-follower Facebook page—an archive of Maltese micro-dramas: the British tourist who cried when we found her antipsychotics; the hunter who drove from Dingli at dawn for tetanus shots after his own dog mistook him for a rabbit. As the neon cross dims, the church bells ring again. Somewhere in Għargħur, another green light takes over, the island’s pulse beating quietly through capsules and kindness.