Farmindustria: reduced drug shortage alarm. Now stop cutting prices

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There is a shortage of some drugs but it is much more limited than Aifa’s list of 3 thousand drugs. Its causes have broad roots reaching as far as the country’s industrial policy issues, its supply chains and pricing. According to what the president of Farmindustria, Marcello Cattani, explains, «the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci, has shed light on the real emergency of medicines in Italy and on the dimensions of the phenomenon. From a brutal list of 3,000 Aifa drugs, which did not allow making the right distinctions, there was a downsizing that highlights the real causes, which are the difficulties in the supply chain of active ingredients.

In recent weeks, Farmindustria itself had underlined that there was a problem linked both to the peak of seasonal diseases which led to an increase in the consumption of some drugs, many of which are used for the treatment of viruses which are highly circulated in this period, both linked to a structural factor concerning the reorganization of the supply chains of active ingredients, and to the very high production costs due to the rise in raw material prices and the energy shock. «We had denounced the problem, but this country has a short memory. We are living in a general situation which has worsened in terms of production costs but which companies have not passed on to drug prices – says Cattani – which in Italy are the lowest in Europe. What we are seeing today are the effects of a historic policy of cuts in healthcare and the system and drug companies have relocated some productions. To reverse this course and give a signal of a change of direction, a logic of valorisation of the supply chain is needed with a strong sustainable industrial model that also passes through the correct remuneration of drugs. The strategy, therefore, cannot be to cut prices». Farmidustria participates in the working table on the supply of medicines which was created precisely to provide answers on this front and, as its president explains, expresses confidence in «the sensitivity of the Government towards the problems of our sector. It has been said that ‘those who work must be left to work’, a strong message in which we believe. We hope that in this country it will be possible for the first time to combine health policy with the industrial chain, enhancing health first and foremost”.