BRATISLAVA (SITA) - Preliminary information from the Slovak Chamber of Pharmacists (SLeK) indicates that all pharmacies in Slovakia, except those providing emergency services, closed between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Patients accepted the protest action of pharmacists and did not visit pharmacies in the time set for the protest. The chamber has received no official response to the first nationwide one-hour closure of pharmacies so far. The pharmacists were protesting against the critical financing situation in this sector where the debt of health insurance companies to pharmacies is nearly 3 billion SKK. The special session of the Slovak Chamber of Pharmacists, held on July 30, decided on the protest strike. The payment discipline of health insurers is chronically bad, and pharmacists already have been forced to stop ordering expensive medicines from their suppliers. Nevertheless, the situation is consistently worsening, and pharmacies in some districts even lack vital drugs, including antibiotics and insulin. According to the related law, health insurance companies must pay invoices to pharmacies for medicines and other medical materials within one month of the invoicing of the received prescriptions. In reality, however, some insurance companies have still not paid invoices from 1997. Another request of the chamber is that the state guarantees the obligations of all the health insurers in case of bankruptcy. If the situation does not improve by August 15, the chamber will instruct its members to give drugs only to those insured by health insurers whose obligations are guaranteed by law. Currently the state guarantees the obligations of the only state-owned health insurers.