Missing drugs, from pancreatic enzymes to insulin: after the investigation by Il Messaggero, which explored the alarm launched a week ago by Fedez on social media, the case reaches Parliament. The senators of the Democratic Party Beatrice Lorenzin, vice president of the group, Filippo Sensi and Alfredo Bazoli, who asked a question to the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci to find out what the government intends to do.
INSIGHTS
The question starts from the data collected by the Messaggero: «Given that – we read in the document – pharmacies have been lacking certain drugs for months now, often linked to life-saving therapies.
According to data provided by Aifa, the Italian medicines agency, there are approximately 3,500 products lacking, for very different reasons: supply discontinuity, production problems, temporary interruptions in the distribution chain. Geopolitical issues of production and supply, linked to international conflicts, also weigh on these difficulties.”
«The simultaneous presence of the flu syndrome and Covid have a significant impact on the lack of these products in availability to the public – underline the three senators – if for some commonly used drugs such as paracetamol, ibuprofen, antibiotics or amoxicillin the difficulty in obtaining is supplied by other alternative drugs, for many others such as pancreatic enzymes and insulins the alternative is not present”.
Hence the greatest alarm for thousands of patients: «The most pronounced shortages concern drugs that are more difficult to obtain, such as phenobarbital for the treatment of epilepsy; semaglutide for the treatment of diabetes and liraglutide due to the effects found in slimming treatments; scarcity that seems destined to increase. According to AIFA data, there are around 300 real, effective drug shortages, 30 of which are more critical: antibiotics, anticancer drugs, anti-diabetics, drugs that act on the central nervous system”.
«We ask to know – concludes the question – what urgent initiatives the Minister intends to adopt in order to prevent the shortage of precious and essential drugs for various therapies and for a wide spectrum of pathologies from continuing further with evident and serious damage for the health of citizens”.
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