AssoGenerici intervenes on the latest statements by Farmindustria, to specify that recourse to discounts does not concern only generics but, as Councilor Rossi rightly pointed out in his statement, all "off patent" drugs, which - as is well known - are not only generics. "Proof of that," he says Giorgio Foresti, President of AssoGenerici – there are numbers; in fact, commissioner Rossi declares a loss for the NHS of one billion, on a turnover of 4 billion euros which corresponds to the off-patent market". "I would like to remind everyone - continued Foresti - that AssoGenerici raised the issue of with the Antitrust at the beginning of April, and well before, at the working table set up by the Ministry of Health last autumn. This is to make it clear that the discount phenomenon concerns the entire drug system, not just generics, and that overall solutions must be found that allow for a balanced development of all market components and compliance with the needs of all parties involved. In this regard, I would like to ask Farmindustria not to repeat the instrumental declarations on the quality of the generic, as the Vice-President did again yesterday.
The quality of the generic can no longer be questioned with arbitrary and unfounded claims, which aim only to defend now unsustainable rents. The active ingredients, which according to the Vice-President of Farmindustria come from unknown countries, are controlled and authorized by the European and Italian authorities and, only after authorization, are they used by both generic drug companies and branded drug companies. As far as research and the Vice-President's concerns are concerned, I stress that, in our opinion, the very savings that generic drugs guarantee to the system should be reinvested in the sector to stimulate the development and study of molecules that still have a lot to offer to treatment of Italian patients. Finally, I would like to underline how the countries with the highest concentration of pharmaceutical industries and with the highest rate of investment in research - such as the United States, Germany and England - coincidentally, are also the countries in which the market share of generics is among the highest in the world and where the entry of the first generic drug dates back to over 35 years ago. It would also be more correct to ask why, in the rest of the world, when the patents expire for molecules, consumption increases significantly while in Italy the opposite phenomenon occurs and consumption collapses". Doctornews 11-06-08
