That of the optimal packaging of drugs for a cycle of therapy is an old and never resolved question to which - probably - less attention is paid than it deserves.
A new spotlight on the subject has been turned on in recent days by a major newspaper, The print of Turin, with an article signed by Paolo Russo which, already in its incipit, provides the essential coordinates of the phenomenon: one drug out of ten ends up in the trash because the boxes contain more or fewer pills than are needed to complete the therapy. A waste that alone costs us 1.6 billion a year. And which, added to others – such as golden consultancies which, whether they are needed or not, cost another 780 million, canteen and cleaning services paid for at least a billion more than they should cost, project financing to build hospitals that require disbursements equivalent to those for the construction of the hospital itself, unnecessary legal costs for proceedings against doctors and hospitals which then end up archived - leads to a waste of 3.5 billion a year, according to what emerges from a union study of Anaao-young hospital doctors.
A figure that sounds even more serious and shameful, at a time when in the next budget session it will be difficult to defend the funding levels of the 2017 Fsn, with the risk that the expected two billion more that should bring it to 113 billion will end to be less.
The print, on the subject of far from optimal drug packaging, which has been discussed for some time without however being resolved, raises a series of justified questions: “Why isn't it deleted? Is it just waste or also fraud? Is one drug thrown away out of ten purchased worth it for anyone? Does it engage the mechanism whereby you throw away the “leftovers” of the first pack and buy a second whole pack?”
The problem of the 'wrong' packaging of medicines, precisely because of its (at least in theory) easy solution, appears in fact as particularly odious: there is not a single reason, at least among the confessable ones, to allow that because of boxes with a number of pills, tablets or vials "adjusted" with respect to the needs imposed by the cycle of therapy the 10% of medicines is wasted (the estimate is of the prestigious British Medical Journal).
Perplexities (and with them anger) rise if one thinks of all the regulations which, in the last ten years of laws and economic maneuvers carried out with the ax in hand, have been passed to push the industry to produce "optimal packs" of medicines, made on the basis of the duration of a therapy. Norms which – he goes to know why and through whose fault – have evidently not produced the desired results, at least judging by the examples brought to The print as deputy national secretary Fimmg Pierluigi Bartoletti.
Another example is ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic that is also widely used, sold in boxes of 5 tablets instead of seven. Which makes it necessary to purchase a second pack which however automatically entails the waste of the remaining 3 pills.
"A similar waste occurs for antihypertensives for which the packs are usually 28 tablets" adds Bartoletti. “Too few for the therapy of a chronic patient, too many for those who only have to test the functioning of the drug, perhaps for only 10 or 15 days”.
Who, due to their role and their function, should do everything to "protect" their clients and the NHS all from anomalies without justification, even forcing the institutions - with any lawful form of initiatives and persuasive pressures - to intervene to prevent behaviors from continuing to find space within the confines of the Italian health system which to some, in their substance, are very reminiscent of the opportunism of looters. No offense to anyone, of course. Jackals included.
Related news: Drugs, the packs are too big. Healthcare wastes 1.6 billion every year