Italian pharmaceuticals – largely the "daughter" of multinationals – is an economic reality: 26 billion in value, 174 factories, 63,500 employees. The newly re-elected president of the association, Scaccabarozzi, is right in saying that the sector is a development lever, not a cost.
But the crisis hits: 11,500 fewer jobs (especially informants) in 6 years, they are worrying. Pharmaceuticals are in any case a cost for the state: 14 percent of health expenditure, even if the lowest in Europe and down by 3 percent for six years. To keep up, Farmindustria is asking for less bureaucracy, more efficiency and rapid times for placing new medicines on the market. The same requests as in recent years, in practice, but legitimate for those who have to invest.
But they have always remained a dead letter. Why? Perhaps the drug manufacturers are seen as the "rich", those who exploit people's need for health? Hard to tell. However the story (recounted by Salute last Tuesday) of the two anticancer drugs produced by Roche and Sanofi, on sale at the expense of citizens for 6,000 and 4,000 euros, certainly does not help the image of the industries.
Anti-cancer treatments cannot be a privilege for the few.
Guglielmo Pepe – 9 July 2013 – the Republic
Merck Serono: you can believe in Italy
An interview with Stefan Oschmann, worldwide CEO of the German company
