Minister of Health Thanos Plevris, President of EOF Dimitris Philippou and President of IFET Giannis Sotiriou will hold a press conference at the Ministry of Health today at 17:00 on the shortage of specific medicines.

According to the information, the Minister of Health will carefully analyze the announced measures to combat the shortage of medicines, explain the causes of the problem and ways to solve it.

The Minister of Health spoke in detail in the morning about the lack of basic necessities medicines We are also talking about raising prices for some medicines, which are among the measures that the ministry will implement.

In particular, with regard to price increases, Mr. Plyuris specified that they would only affect very cheap drugsorder 1-2 eurowhich do not “get out” in terms of cost due to the energy crisis.

Price increases

“If these drugs are recalled, the citizen will have to take other, much more expensive ones. There is a generic amoxicillin, the price of which is 2.20 euros, and the cost of its production is 2 euros. Obviously, there will be an increase that will be covered by EOPYY, because when it comes to a 20-30-minute increase, of which 10% is for the consumer, the burden is on EOPYY,” the ERT minister said.

In fact, in order to emphasize the importance genericsThe Minister of Health said that “all Greek hospitals have generics, this is a safe medicine, large multinational corporations trust the Greek pharmaceutical industry to manufacture their medicines.”

He calculated that “since cases of infection in Europe have reached their peak, we believe that demand will decrease, and therefore, in parallel with the measures that we have introduced since March, we will have a normalization of the situation in Greece even this month.”

Substitutes and imports

At the same time, he argued that the problem of scarcity – although timeless – is not as exaggerated in our country as compared to the rest of Europe, since Greece has a strong pharmaceutical industry. According to him, there is no shortage in EOPYY hospitals and pharmacies, and the main problem is private pharmacies.

“Therefore, we are going to solve the problem in private pharmacies like this: where we have a substitute, because there are substitutes, someone may not find, say, the classic easy medicine that we have in mind, Depon, but there are paracetamol of other drugs , therefore, there will be full information, because there the shortage concerns medicines, it does not concern antipyretics in general, and wherever we have a shortage that cannot be covered by the Greek market through IFET, orders will be constantly made,” he noted.

Speaking about the shortage of respiratory drugs, he stressed that there will be a large import of them, and for antipyretics, preference will be given to substitutes. Where there is no substitute, the ministry will try to ensure sufficiency through purchases and imports.

“EOF will inform citizens immediately if they cannot find any medicine they can purchase. Pharmacists have the same information. Physicians who prescribe medication themselves will be informed about elliptical trainers so that they know how to prescribe appropriate therapeutic agents and not make people suffer. We are trying to help a citizen suffering on two levels. First of all, he must know what a substitute is, which is not in short supply, and where there is a substitute, he must go and trust him,” Mr. Plyuris emphasized.

Causes of the crisis

Explaining the reasons for the lack of drugs, he said that first of all there is a long-standing problem with drugs in which parallel exports are carried out. “There, the state is taking measures that have been exhausting lately, since the only punishment for what is exported is the closure of pharmacy warehouses.”

At the second level, the minister said, there is a global shortage of seasonal drugs due to the post-pandemic virus outbreak around the world and low production due to energy costs. At the same time, since production is carried out mainly in Asia, its countries store drugs to cover their own population.

Finally, regarding the letter he sent to the Commission, Thanos Pleuris explained that: “We are asking the EU for immediate action, such as importing raw materials or covering shortages from central supplies, and to support the European pharmaceutical industry, Asia cannot be relied upon” .