June 11, 2012 – 09:26
(ASCA) - Rome, June 11 - Drug stock shortages due to parallel exports? The answer is called direct distribution. Tuscany is leading the way - Pharmacist33 points out today - where for about 15 days a pregabalin-based antiepileptic has been arriving at pharmacies only through the Dpc. It is the solution that regional Federfarma, the manufacturing company (Pfizer) and the Region have agreed after the increasingly frequent cases of unavailability recorded by this drug. ”Here with us – explains the president of the Tuscan owners, Marco Nocentini Mungai [in the picture] – this product was already part of the extended list of specialties subject to dual channel. Thus, when the shortcomings began to threaten the efficiency of the service, it was easy to find an understanding with the Region and the producer". "The phenomena of hoarding from parallel exports are unbearable because they damage the citizens", adds Loredano Giorni, director of the territorial pharmaceutical service "therefore we will maintain this distribution regime as long as it is needed and, if necessary, we will apply it whenever it becomes necessary".
On the other hand, those who show discomfort for the Tuscan novelty are the intermediate distributors. Already worried by the increasingly frequent use of direct-to-pharmacy by various manufacturers (who thus "occupy" the shelves of pharmacies and lock down their market shares), wholesalers fear that the idea could also be extended to other medicines on the way out or, even worse, exported to other regions. Maybe we'll talk about it again in a meeting between all the players, but in the meantime - underlines the online publication of the pharmacy owners - one wonders what happened to that memorandum of understanding signed a year ago by all the acronyms of the supply chain (Farmindustria, Federfarma, Adf, Federfarma Servizi, Fofi, Assofarm): it promised the establishment of a monitoring network to identify and eliminate out-of-stock, nothing has been done about it. And in the meantime the episodes of unavailability have grown in frequency and intensity.
"By now they follow one another in fits and starts - Nocentini confirms - they are not tolerable and we are ready to discuss with the Region if other interventions are needed". "I have already reported the problem to the Medicines Agency and I will come back to bring it up again", concludes Giorni, who sits on the AIFA pricing committee, "if they were feasible, coercive measures could also be taken to stop the phenomenon of parallel exports".
