“This drug there isn’t, I’m sorry.’ To the parent who needs an anti-inflammatory for children all that remains is to arm yourself with holy patience and try to ask in another pharmacy. But if in the end a product is always available for the little ones, it is more difficult to be able to find an alternative medicine, especially for those suffering from diabetes or having epileptic seizures. The latest bulletin from Aifa, the Italian drug agency, reported the lack of around 3,200 medicines. Between the Covid emergency and the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the difficulties in finding medicines have in fact put a strain on both pharmacists and patients. Yet, even today, the situation does not seem to have returned to normal.
In the capital, many parents struggle to find even children antibiotics. And the same problem has been repeated for some time in many Italian pharmacies. But now they are trying to compensate by selling generic drugs.
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«Right now in the Marche – explains Marco Meconi, regional vice president of Federfarma – we are moving towards a condition of improvement of the situation thanks to equivalent products and galenic preparations. Stocks of the original drug are impossible: supplies arrive but they are limited and do not serve to cover all requests”. However, the problem remains unsolved if the patient asks, for example, for an injectable antidiabetic. «These are particular products, Meconi reiterates, and if they are not found, we have difficulty suggesting an alternative. If a product is equivalent, i.e. if it is on the so-called transparency list, we can replace the medicine without the need for the patient to go to the doctor again to have his therapy changed. But that’s not always possible.” Even in Lombardy, pharmacies are trying to get by with alternative products. «The problem of the shortage of a few months ago – says Annarosa Racca, regional president of Federfarma – has been solved with the arrival of generics. For example, for a syrup there is always a solution». Massimo Mana, regional president of Federfarma of Piedmont, still observes several critical issues. «The products arrive in fits and starts, he says it is true that there is no longer the shortage of the past months, but the medicines are not yet sufficient. There is no syrup for children. With antiepileptics, the supply has improved somewhat, but we are still in short supply. And so those who need it are forced to go around the seven churches: in the end they find a few pieces around, if the wholesaler has the drug. The real problem is that maybe we ask, for example, for ten pieces and two arrive. Where possible we suggest the use of the generic».
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IMPOSSIBLE REPLACEMENT
But it happens that for some products, either even the corresponding unbranded product has run out or there really isn’t a substitute drug. «The antibiotic for children maybe it has the generic, explains Mana – but often that too ends up, because normally these products have lower quotas than the original and companies don’t always have the ability to quickly supply wholesalers». Not to mention that even the delivery times have now lengthened. “Given that the increase in costs leads to trying to fill the truck that delivers the drugs, to save money instead of spending every week maybe it arrives once a month”. In short, the situation is complicated by several factors. Not always surmountable. «Unfortunately, a series of coincidences has created a problem that cyclically reappears every year, explains Roberto Tobia, national secretary of Federfarma. We still have difficulties with some cortisone and some anti-inflammatories. Precisely for this reason, at European level we are carrying out a project to prevent shortages, allowing European drug agencies under the aegis of the EMA to move quotas of drugs to countries where there is a shortage of products. But in fact there is only one real solution to the problem: to make the pharmaceutical industry less dependent on production coming from abroad».
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