{"id":3468,"date":"2014-09-22T18:48:14","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T16:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/?p=3468"},"modified":"2014-09-22T18:48:14","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T16:48:14","slug":"aifa-se-non-fa-suo-dovere-serve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/aifa-se-non-fa-suo-dovere-serve\/","title":{"rendered":"M5S. Aifa: if it doesn't do its duty, what is it for?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aifa is a reality in which\u00a0too many accounts do not add up<\/strong>\u00a0and a government that was really interested in making it work properly, first of all for the protection of citizens, would already have it\u00a0handed over for a while<\/strong>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Written by\u00a0M5S Camera News<\/a>\u00a0published on 22.09.14<\/a><\/p>\n

Have you ever gone in\u00a0pharmacy<\/strong>, submit your\u00a0recipe<\/strong>,\u00a0request a drug<\/strong>\u00a0and hear you answer that\u00a0not available<\/strong>? And then go out, go to a second pharmacy, ask for the same drug (it could be an antidepressant, a drug for the treatment of Parkinson's or hypertension or maybe a life-saving drug, an antiepileptic, antiasthmatic, or an anticancer drug) and hear you answer "we order them but they don't arrive"? Do you know what the reason is?<\/p>\n

This is the so-called\u00a0parallel export<\/strong>. That is to say,\u00a0drugs are purchased wholesale in Italy and then sold abroad at a higher price from 20 to 60%<\/strong>. This practice is allowed by European legislation on the free movement of goods and by the fact that Italian pharmacies, according to a 2006 law, can act as wholesalers. Thus, for example, \"\"The\u00a0Cymbalta<\/strong>, a\u00a0antidepressant<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>which in our pharmacies costs\u00a024,90<\/strong>\u00a0euro, it ends in Germany<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>where it is sold to\u00a087,68<\/strong>\u00a0EUR. Then there is also the case of Leukeran<\/strong>,\u00a0anticancer<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>used in the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas and ovarian adenocarcinomas, manufactured by Aspen which,\u00a0<\/b>after having been "hidden" for a long time from the Italian market, it is put back on the market with the reduced price, per single package, from the previous 7.13 euros to 94.95<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In front of these\u00a0obvious distortions<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>we questioned the\u00a0Minister Lorenzin <\/strong>to ask her the reason for this disproportionate increase in the price of Leukeran, in the light of the fact that the manufacturing company has not had to make any additional outlay with respect to its placing on the market, which dates back to 2000, and how it intends to address the serious problem of the shortage drug periodical.<\/p>\n

\"\"In addition to the questions we submitted to the minister, there is another one to ask upstream:\u00a0what is AIFA for?<\/strong>, the agency which should guarantee citizens' access to medicines, monitor marketing, control production facilities and manufacturing quality, verify safety, appropriateness of use, price negotiation and much more even more? The question becomes serious when cases such as that of Leukeran continue to recur, if the Agency does not intervene with respect to\u00a0scams<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>to the detriment of the Health Service (such as that hypothesized for\u00a0Avastin<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>And\u00a0Lucentis<\/strong>), if it allows the purchase of an antiviral drug such as the\u00a0Tamiflu<\/strong>cost to the public coffers\u00a050 million euros<\/strong>which later proved to be ineffective.<\/p>\n

Aifa is a reality in which\u00a0too many accounts do not add up<\/strong>\u00a0and a government that was really interested in making it work properly, first of all for the protection of citizens, would already have it\u00a0handed over for a while<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Instead,\u00a0Nothing<\/strong>. But in return\u00a0Lorenzin commissioner of the Higher Institute of Health<\/strong>, against which a procedure has been adopted that we do not hesitate to define\u00a0forced<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>And\u00a0instrumental<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We want to see each other clearly about AIFA. We have been digging for months and we will not stop until the situation changes radically.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unobtainable drugs, the odyssey of patients<\/span><\/h2>\n

Mario De Fazio \u2013 21 September 2014 \u2013 THE XIX CENTURY Savona<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Savona \u2013\u00a0A daily odyssey. This is how hundreds of patients live every day who look for drugs that cannot be found in pharmacies in half of the province. <\/b>Daily pilgrimages, behind which there may not be only a perverse, purely speculative mechanism, through which \u2013\u00a0exploiting the cost disparities for medicines in different European countries<\/b>\u00a0\u2013 pharmaceutical companies, wholesalers and, at least in theory, pharmacies too, resell medicines abroad rather than in Italy because \u2013 simply \u2013 in this way they make more money.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon concerns all of Italy but in Savona it seems to have even more harmful effects. An anomaly that poses serious inconvenience to patients, who often find themselves forced to face ups and downs and travel in order to be able to buy delicate medicines, such as\u00a0anti-depressants or those used to combat neurological diseases<\/b>. This is confirmed not only by the president of the order of pharmacists of Savona, Giovanni Zorgno, but also by the Consumer Movement which has been collecting reports of exasperated citizens for months.<\/p>\n

The (perverse) mechanism, in many cases, is simple: having expired the Italian patents of some "generators" - the drugs that were patented in the past and which are then "copied", in the active ingredient and in the composition by the generics -\u00a0prices have collapsed, in some cases reaching half of the original cost<\/b>. And so some of these pharmaceutical products produced by pharmaceutical companies on the basis of market demand - are placed on foreign markets, in countries where those same drugs have not yet expired patents. And where,\u00a0\u00e7a va sans dire<\/i>can be sold at higher prices. Thus wholesalers and some pharmacists (but only those authorized to resell) obtain more profits, however, causing a shortage of those same products in our local pharmacies.<\/p>\n

There are numerous examples of "untraceable" drugs:\u00a0they range from anti-depressants such as Cymbalta, Wellbutrin and Elontril\u00a0<\/b>to anti-epileptic drugs or in general used for neurological diseases, such as Lyrica. But even powerful anti-inflammatories like Pentasa or an anti-asthmatic like Assieme are more difficult to find than the classic needle in a haystack. And the reporting forms that every pharmacy is required to send in the event of a drug missing seem to be worthless. The case of the Zorgno pharmacy, in Piazza Diaz, owned by the president of the Order himself, is sensational.\u00a0\u00abFrom 22 August to today we have sent 74 reporting forms for absent drugs<\/b>\u00a0\u2013 explains Dr. Zorgno -. The reports reach Federfarma which then forwards them to the Municipalities and Local Health Authorities which activate the Nas checks if necessary. Drugs that take other routes should be subjected to controls but it is often difficult to identify the link in the chain on which to intervene. I hope that there are no pharmacies that "play" on this side: we have already taken steps to report illegal activities and there are cases of pharmacies, to the west, which are on trial. We will continue to monitor but the mechanism is complicated because several Savona pharmacies also use Lombard or Piedmontese wholesalers \u00bb.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

L’Aifa \u00e8 una realt\u00e0 nella quale\u00a0troppi conti non tornano\u00a0e un governo che fosse davvero interessato a farla funzionare correttamente, per la tutela dei cittadini in primis, ci avrebbe gi\u00e0\u00a0messo mano da un pezzo. Scritto da\u00a0M5S Camera News\u00a0pubblicato il\u00a022.09.14 Vi \u00e8 mai capitato di recarvi in\u00a0farmacia, presentare la vostra\u00a0ricetta,\u00a0richiedere un farmaco\u00a0e sentirvi rispondere che\u00a0non \u00e8 disponibile? …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-3468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-notizie","tag-aifa"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fedaiisf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}