From tickets to over-the-counter medicines, with 9.9 billion euros in 2022 citizens’ private spending on medicines will continue to grow in 2022, with +7.6% compared to 2021. More than 6 out of 10 citizens have received at least one prescription, with consumption increasing as age increases: the population over 64 absorbs over 60% of expenditure and doses. While the use of antibiotics in children sees an annual increase of more than 53%. These are some of the data that emerge from the 2022 Report “The use of drugs in Italy”, created by the National Observatory on the use of medicines (OsMed) of Aifa.
Quasi 4.2 million children and adolescents received at least one drug prescription, accounting for 45% of the pediatric population. Compared to 2021, there is an increase in per capita packs concentrated in children between 6 and 11 years of age. Antibiotics are confirmed as the category with the greatest consumption in children, followed by respiratory drugs, both of which have grown together with the recovery of infectious diseases, hand in hand with the reduction of anti-Covid measures: for both categories there is “a strong increase in consumption compared to the previous year, respectively by 53.3% and 36.9%”.
In 2022 they were dispensed with 1.9 billion packages of medicines in territorial assistance, up 3.5% over the previous year. In the elderly population, the average expenditure per user was 556 Euros and almost the entire population (98%) received at least one pharmacological prescription during the year. Each user consumed an average of more than 3.5 doses per day (with higher levels in males than females) and took 7.6 different substances.
In 2022, expired patent medicines accounted for 71.6% of expenditure and 86.2% of consumption under class A subsidized assistance. In 2022, expired patent medicines accounted for 71.6% of expenditure and 86.2% of consumption.
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