News · July 3, 2026

New dossier: The Netherlands takes billions of paracetamol tablets

Pain ​​relief or rejection? Zorgfuik lists the figures behind the most famous sentence from the consultation room.

“Just take paracetamol and wait a while.” Almost everyone in the Netherlands knows that sentence. Often it is sensible first advice. But paracetamol is also sold and supplied on a huge scale, much of it without a prescription and therefore outside the GP’s direct view.

The new dossier explains what those figures mean in plain language: what is known about paracetamol for common complaints, why it can become the default answer in an overloaded care system, and which number is not registered anywhere: how many people never call back after being told to wait.

The point is not that paracetamol itself is the care trap. The trap starts when a first step has no evaluation, no end point and no clear next step if the complaint remains.

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