ROME – Legalize the direct home sale and bulk sale of medicines, with a view to more effective and less burdensome treatments for the National Health System. The request, contained in a question addressed to the Minister of Labour, Health and Social Policies Maurizio Sacconi, was made by Donatella Poretti and Marco Perduca of the Democratic Party in the session of Palazzo Madama on 11 June.
The parliamentarians recall that in Great Britain and the United States, unlike in Italy, pharmaceutical companies can sell medicines directly to patients via home delivery. It is a practice used in particular for patients suffering from chronic diseases such as HIV, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia and multiple sclerosis, which require the continued and regular administration of prescription medicines. Data from a survey by the newspaper "The Times" dated August 28, 2007 – reads the question – show how direct home sales allow patients, pharmaceutical companies and the British health system to save hundreds of millions of euros every year. This system - explain the parliamentarians - eliminates the costs of large and small distribution, as well as facilitating and encouraging the home treatment of patients who otherwise require frequent hospitalization. (dp)
Below is the text of the deed:
PORETTI, PERDUCA - To the Minister of Labour, Health, Social Policies - Given that:
in Great Britain and the United States, unlike in Italy, pharmaceutical companies can sell medicines directly to patients via home delivery. This practice is largely used for patients suffering from chronic diseases such as HIV, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia and multiple sclerosis, which require the continued and regular administration of prescription medicines;
according to a survey by the newspaper "The Times" of August 28, 2007, direct home sales save patients, pharmaceutical companies and the British health system hundreds of millions of euros every year. This practice, in fact, eliminates the costs of large and small distribution, as well as facilitating and encouraging the home treatment of patients who otherwise require frequent hospitalization;
always according to "The Times", thanks to the direct home sale of medicines, the cost of HIV treatment can decrease up to 2,000 euros a year for each patient treated in one's own home;
direct door-to-door selling facilitates the delivery of new generation biological pharmaceutical products – extracted from living biological material, such as vaccines, antibodies, interleukin – that require refrigeration and rapid delivery. The transition from large to small distribution, in addition to increasing the costs of these products (and therefore the costs for the health system), hinders the rapid delivery of these medicines;
whereas:
an experiment launched in Galicia (Spain) which saw the administration of individual doses of antibiotics, with the doctor prescribing and the pharmacist delivering the appropriate dose to the patient and not the whole package, produced a saving of 35 percent in expenditure for this type of medicine. This method of sale is already permitted in many countries, including the United States. In Italy, this method of administering antibiotics alone would save about 400 million euros;
in 2005 alone, pharmaceutical assistance paid for by the national health system and patients, provided through pharmacies open to the public, excluding direct purchases by health authorities, recorded a gross overrun of the expected expenditure of 380 million euro,
