Introduction

It’s midnight. You have a terrible headache, or your baby urgently needs syrup. You grab your phone to look for the nearest open pharmacy, and two terms often pop up: duty pharmacy (pharmacie de garde) and 24/7 pharmacy (pharmacie 24h/24).

While both options allow you to buy your medicines in the middle of the night, they operate in very different ways. So, which one should you choose? Are the prices the same?

What is a duty pharmacy?

The duty pharmacy does not work at night or on weekends by choice, but by legal obligation and solidarity. To ensure access to healthcare for all citizens, the pharmacists’ syndicate organizes a rotation schedule.

Taking turns, the pharmacies in the same neighborhood take over outside regular opening hours. There are two types:

1. The day shift: These are the pharmacies that open on Sundays and public holidays (generally from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.).
2. The night shift: They take over from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. the next morning.
   • Detail to remember: A duty pharmacy today won’t be one tomorrow. It’s a temporary status.

What is a 24/7 pharmacy?

Unlike duty pharmacies, a 24/7 pharmacy has a special authorization to never close its doors. Whether it’s 2 p.m. on a Tuesday or 3 a.m. on a Sunday, its status is permanent.

However, they are much rarer. For example, a large metropolis like Casablanca has hundreds of pharmacies, but only about thirty have the 24/7 status.

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The Great Comparison: Prices, distances, and choices

Do medicines cost more at night? No! That’s a common misconception.¹ In Morocco, the Public Sale Price of medicines is set by the State. There is no “night tax.”

Criteria	Duty Pharmacy	24/7 Pharmacy
Status	Temporary (Rotation)	Permanent
Proximity	Very close (In every neighborhood)	Farther (Main roads)
Night Price	Identical to daytime	Identical to daytime

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Find the right pharmacy without wasting time

In a nighttime emergency, no one has the time or energy to drive around the neighborhood reading small paper signs stuck on windows.

PharmaSOS

The platform that centralizes all open pharmacies (duty and 24/7) in Morocco in real-time.

How to use it?

1. Connect to our website.
2. Choose your city (Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, Salé, Témara, or Aïn Aouda).
3. Launch the GPS itinerary directly on your phone.

Details

Why is the door closed at night?

For security reasons, the main door of duty pharmacies is often closed at night: the pharmacist will serve you through a small secure window. Don’t hesitate to ring the bell!

In summary: Stop searching at random. Whether it’s a local duty pharmacy or a large 24/7 pharmacy, find the one open near you with a single click on PharmaSOS.

※ Our robot automatically updates the data every night. Thus, you are guaranteed to find an open door, stress-free.

Link

• URL is automatically linked: https://pharmasos.com/en/
• Find the nearest pharmacy on PharmaSOS
• Check the list of open pharmacies

Footnotes

1. The PPV (Public Sale Price) guarantees that the price of your box of paracetamol or antibiotic will be exactly the same at 4 a.m. or 2 p.m. ↩