Aifa is a reality in which too many accounts do not add up and a government that was really interested in making it work properly, first of all for the protection of citizens, would already have it handed over for a while.
Written by M5S Camera News published on 22.09.14
Have you ever gone in pharmacy, submit your recipe, request a drug and hear you answer that not available? And then go out, go to a second pharmacy, ask for the same drug (it could be an antidepressant, a drug for the treatment of Parkinson's or hypertension or maybe a life-saving drug, an antiepileptic, antiasthmatic, or an anticancer drug) and hear you answer "we order them but they don't arrive"? Do you know what the reason is?
This is the so-called parallel export. That is to say, drugs are purchased wholesale in Italy and then sold abroad at a higher price from 20 to 60%. This practice is allowed by European legislation on the free movement of goods and by the fact that Italian pharmacies, according to a 2006 law, can act as wholesalers. Thus, for example, 
The Cymbalta, a antidepressant which in our pharmacies costs 24,90 euro, it ends in Germany where it is sold to 87,68 EUR. Then there is also the case of Leukeran, anticancer used in the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas and ovarian adenocarcinomas, manufactured by Aspen which, after having been "hidden" for a long time from the Italian market, it is put back on the market with the reduced price, per single package, from the previous 7.13 euros to 94.95.
In front of these obvious distortions we questioned the Minister Lorenzin to ask her the reason for this disproportionate increase in the price of Leukeran, in the light of the fact that the manufacturing company has not had to make any additional outlay with respect to its placing on the market, which dates back to 2000, and how it intends to address the serious problem of the shortage drug periodical.
In addition to the questions we submitted to the minister, there is another one to ask upstream: what is AIFA for?, the agency which should guarantee citizens' access to medicines, monitor marketing, control production facilities and manufacturing quality, verify safety, appropriateness of use, price negotiation and much more even more? The question becomes serious when cases such as that of Leukeran continue to recur, if the Agency does not intervene with respect to scams to the detriment of the Health Service (such as that hypothesized for Avastin And Lucentis), if it allows the purchase of an antiviral drug such as the Tamiflucost to the public coffers 50 million euroswhich later proved to be ineffective.
Aifa is a reality in which too many accounts do not add up and a government that was really interested in making it work properly, first of all for the protection of citizens, would already have it handed over for a while.
Instead, Nothing. But in return Lorenzin commissioner of the Higher Institute of Health, against which a procedure has been adopted that we do not hesitate to define forced And instrumental.
We want to see each other clearly about AIFA. We have been digging for months and we will not stop until the situation changes radically.
Unobtainable drugs, the odyssey of patients
Mario De Fazio – 21 September 2014 – THE XIX CENTURY Savona
Savona – A daily odyssey. This is how hundreds of patients live every day who look for drugs that cannot be found in pharmacies in half of the province. Daily pilgrimages, behind which there may not be only a perverse, purely speculative mechanism, through which – exploiting the cost disparities for medicines in different European countries – pharmaceutical companies, wholesalers and, at least in theory, pharmacies too, resell medicines abroad rather than in Italy because – simply – in this way they make more money.
The phenomenon concerns all of Italy but in Savona it seems to have even more harmful effects. An anomaly that poses serious inconvenience to patients, who often find themselves forced to face ups and downs and travel in order to be able to buy delicate medicines, such as anti-depressants or those used to combat neurological diseases. This is confirmed not only by the president of the order of pharmacists of Savona, Giovanni Zorgno, but also by the Consumer Movement which has been collecting reports of exasperated citizens for months.
The (perverse) mechanism, in many cases, is simple: having expired the Italian patents of some "generators" - the drugs that were patented in the past and which are then "copied", in the active ingredient and in the composition by the generics - prices have collapsed, in some cases reaching half of the original cost. And so some of these pharmaceutical products produced by pharmaceutical companies on the basis of market demand - are placed on foreign markets, in countries where those same drugs have not yet expired patents. And where, ça va sans direcan be sold at higher prices. Thus wholesalers and some pharmacists (but only those authorized to resell) obtain more profits, however, causing a shortage of those same products in our local pharmacies.
There are numerous examples of "untraceable" drugs: they range from anti-depressants such as Cymbalta, Wellbutrin and Elontril to anti-epileptic drugs or in general used for neurological diseases, such as Lyrica. But even powerful anti-inflammatories like Pentasa or an anti-asthmatic like Assieme are more difficult to find than the classic needle in a haystack. And the reporting forms that every pharmacy is required to send in the event of a drug missing seem to be worthless. The case of the Zorgno pharmacy, in Piazza Diaz, owned by the president of the Order himself, is sensational. «From 22 August to today we have sent 74 reporting forms for absent drugs – explains Dr. Zorgno -. The reports reach Federfarma which then forwards them to the Municipalities and Local Health Authorities which activate the Nas checks if necessary. Drugs that take other routes should be subjected to controls but it is often difficult to identify the link in the chain on which to intervene. I hope that there are no pharmacies that "play" on this side: we have already taken steps to report illegal activities and there are cases of pharmacies, to the west, which are on trial. We will continue to monitor but the mechanism is complicated because several Savona pharmacies also use Lombard or Piedmontese wholesalers ».
