"We will certainly give the drug to everyone, a reasonable eradication plan of the disease needs between six and eight years, a year and a half has already passed so by 2022 it is possible that we will succeed". These are the words of Luke Pani, director of Aifa, the National Medicines Agency, in an interview with Presadiretta (Rai) broadcast on Rai3 about Hepatitis C and the expensive drugs to combat it and of which a summary was provided.
"Eliminating the infection is certainly very useful because it prevents the disease from continuing - underlines Pani - but if the disease does not exist yet, that is, there is the infection but the degree of fibrosis in the liver is minimal or even zero, that patient can wait. Drugs will arrive that will cure in less time with fewer side effects and that will cost less".
Regarding the controversy over the very high cost of the drug, Pani underlined that “we are buying at the lowest price in Europe. We cannot reveal the details of the negotiating agreement because this would invalidate the agreement and therefore we would lose this huge advantage, it can be said that we have closed a contract, and it is public, a
750 million euros for 50,000 patients, which gives us an average price of 15,000 euros per treatment”.
And he also intervened on the cost of the drug Enrico Rossi, President of the Tuscany Region, according to which the price snatched from AIFA is still too high and prevents all the sick from being treated. Rossi also recalls that the Tuscany Region had launched a tender inviting pharmaceutical companies to submit an offer. For Pani, however, "the solution is to go to supranational, not regional tenders. If there has been a mistake in our negotiating skills, it hasn't been as a country - concludes Pani - but as a European continent. We have to negotiate in a multinational way against the multinationals”.
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