Dignitude Reopens the 15th 'Dê Troco a Quem Precisa' Drive Across 500 Pharmacies From 15-26 June — 46,000 Beneficiaries and 3.6 Million Packages Set the Decade Baseline

Dignitude, the Portuguese non-profit best known for running the abem Rede Solidária do Medicamento (abem Solidarity Medicines Network), reopened its annual fundraising drive on Monday, 15 June 2026, with a 12-day campaign across more than 500 pharmacies on the mainland and in the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira. The 2026 edition, the 15th since the campaign was first launched in 2016, runs until 26 June.

The fundraising mechanic is unchanged: customers paying for over-the-counter purchases at participating pharmacies are invited to donate the small change due to them back to Dignitude. Each donation is logged at the counter; donors who request a fiscal receipt are issued one under the Estatuto dos Benefícios Fiscais (Tax Benefits Statute), which makes the contribution deductible for personal-income-tax purposes the following year.

The proceeds feed into the abem programme, the underlying instrument through which Dignitude reimburses participating pharmacies for the out-of-pocket co-payment that Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS — National Health Service) beneficiaries with no financial capacity would otherwise face when filling prescriptions. Eligible recipients are issued a personal abem card, validated through the Instituto de Segurança Social (Social Security Institute) means-test pathway, and then collect their state-subsidised prescribed medicines at participating pharmacies with no further charge.

Dignitude's own counter, published in its 2026 campaign press materials, sets the cumulative scoreboard of the programme at more than 46,000 beneficiaries supported since 2016 and more than 3.6 million packages of medicines dispensed under the abem reimbursement layer. The scale of that footprint is large enough that the programme is now a structural — rather than residual — supplement to the SNS co-payment ladder in several inland and rural concelhos (municipalities), where pharmacy-level reporting shows abem cards account for a non-trivial share of monthly prescription throughput.

Sara Nóbrega, executive director of Dignitude, framed the campaign in terms of converting marginal pharmacy small change into measurable access. "Queremos transformar um gesto simples num impacto real na vida de milhares de pessoas que enfrentam dificuldades no acesso à medicação" (we want to turn a simple gesture into a real impact on the lives of thousands of people who face difficulties accessing medication), she said in the campaign launch statement.

The 2026 campaign also lands at a moment when the chronic-disease prescription mix in Portugal — diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory medicines in particular — has continued to deepen as a share of total dispensations, and where the 30 June Imposto sobre o Rendimento das Pessoas Singulares (IRS — Personal Income Tax) filing deadline gives donors a near-term tax-incentive prompt. Dignitude is partnered with the Associação Nacional das Farmácias (ANF — National Association of Pharmacies) for the pharmacy-side logistics of the drive, and the participating pharmacies are identified by the campaign's red signage at the counter.

The structural ask remains modest at the individual level — a few cents of change per visit — but Dignitude's own statistics make the aggregate case. The 2026 drive runs through 26 June; the 2027 results will be reported in the next campaign cycle.