Rome, April 11, 2023 – They are about three thousand medicines currently lacking in Italy and another 472 are expected to join, which will become so starting from the next few days and in 2024. These are the data presented by theItalian drug agency in a report updated on 11 April 2023 and published on the Aifa official website. A problem that since the beginning of the year has triggered an alarm linked to the lack of availability of common drugs such as antibiotics and antipyretics, but also of those fundamental for specific therapies such as those anticancer. For Aifa, the shortage of a medicine is understood as “difficulty or impossibility for the patient in finding it” and can be of a “temporary or permanent nature” and “determined by various problems”, such as for example the unavailability of the active ingredientproblems related to production, the unexpected increase in requests for a particular medicine or a health emergency.
The shortage of medicines
In the list published by Aifa on its website, there are a total of 3,429 medicines in short supply as of April 11, 2023, among these, 472 will see a drop in their availability starting from the next few days or from 2024. The data of the Italian Medicines Agency, in fact, specify the start and presumed end date of the shortage of a medicine, but also the reason for the shortage itself . Over 50% are drugs for which marketing has been suspended or definitively or temporarily ceased, followed by this production problems, high demandmeasures of a regulatory nature and the deficiency for reasons of a commercial nature.
What to do when a drug is lacking
In the event that a drug is found to be deficient Aifa recommends contacting a specialist or to the general practitioner to be referred on a equivalent medicine (according to data, around 77% of medicines in short supply can be replaced by an equivalent) or in the case of “specific and justified situations, in which the specialist doctor or general practitioner deem it necessary to import the missing medicine , you can activate the import procedure”, reads the Aifa website. In particular and specific episodes, therefore, it is precisely the importation of the medicine that represents an alternative in the event of a lack of medicine, in this case, however, they cannot be dispensed from conventional pharmacies, but exclusively from the ASL or the competent structures for the area.