It was signed by the director general of AIFA Luke Pani, by Commander Nas Cosimo Piccinino, and by the Ministry of Health, the operational protocol that will govern the control activities on medicines for human use, thus giving way to an Italian drug "Super-agency". This was announced in a joint press release which stresses that "the innovative and effective inter-institutional synergy will make it possible to follow the life of the medicinal product in the stages of production, placing on the market, distribution, dispensing and destruction, to prevent the official pharmaceutical supply chain may be polluted by illegal active ingredients, substances and drugs, potentially dangerous for public health". The Super-agency, explains the note, was created to overcome the limits due to the division of skills, therefore now, "the best professionals of the Ministry of Health, Aifa and Nas, will set up an advanced intelligence structure to examine information, reports , commercial flows and coherence with the trend of pathologies in the area, in order to detect system anomalies, to improve the programming of controls and to intervene with the necessary speed in an emergency phase". According to Pani, this protocol consolidates the collaboration that has already been underway for some time, and further expands the areas of mutual cooperation to protect the health of citizens with greater incisiveness. The project, Piccinno explained, stems from an international convention and the protocol signed, he added, «places Italy in a position of pre-eminence in the international arena and represents our country's operational response to joining the "Medicrime" convention, signed in Moscow in October 2011, which will make it possible to combat pharmaceutical crime in all its forms, from counterfeiting to the placing on the market of active ingredients of dubious origin, from pharmaceutical fraud to the abuse of non-therapeutic drugs». For the minister Renato Balduzzi, this is a goal of "extraordinary significance, the result of a strategic vision that our country has been pursuing for a decade now".
December 18, 2012 – DoctorNews
AIFA-NAS protocol, the Italian Medicines Super Agency is born
