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Who agreed to fund patients a life-saving drug? Pharmaceutical Company | Israel today

2020-01-14T22:32:27.337Z


Following the publication in "Israel Today" - Manufacturer decided to donate expensive drug • The absurd: the HMOs refuse to fund hospitalization for the drug health


6 patients suffer from a dangerous neural disease, and the expensive drug is not in the basket • Following the publication in "Israel Today" - the manufacturer decided to donate it to patients • The absurd: Maccabi and Leumi refuse to fund the hospital for the infusion

  • Unpatro, a very expensive cure

Following the exposure in Israel today, six patients have been receiving very expensive and life-saving medication in recent weeks, which is not included in the drug basket. The drug is for the rare disease from which they suffer.

The drug is funded by the pharmaceutical company, and it costs about NIS 1 million a year. It is also one of the drugs that received a very high rating in the Drug Basket Committee hearings, and it has reached the final stage of the basket committee commencing today.

In November 2019, "Israel Today" reveals that Dr. Amir Dori, a senior neurologist at the Sheba government hospital in Tel Hasharam, has rarely warned the Medicines and Health Services Committee that "six patients I treat, who are deteriorating under existing drug treatment, will die Within a year to two years if the new drug is not included in the basket. "

Dr Dori told Israel Today yesterday that the new drug now being given to patients will undoubtedly curb the deterioration of the disease "and has already led to some of them significantly improving their condition."

Dr. Dori, a senior neurologist in Israel, runs a neurology department of the Sheba Neurological Department, treating almost all patients in Israel with the inherited and rare genetic amyloidosis family disease that causes severe damage to the nervous system, heart, digestive system, kidneys, eyes and brain. The disease progresses slowly and usually erupts around the age of 50, causing severe disability that rapidly worsens and deaths with the most agony and pain. The disease is especially prevalent in Portugal, Sweden, Italy, Japan and Bulgaria.

To date, some 40 carriers of the disease, most of them members of the Yemeni community, have been diagnosed in about ten families documented in Israel as carrying the gene that causes the disease. Among those diagnosed in the country with the disease, about ten patients are already being treated with an expensive drug (the US drug giant VYNDAMAX, which was put in the basket about four years ago and given initial stages of the disease).

An urgent need

However, as the disease progresses and worsens, some patients in the basal drug do not help and, according to Dr. Dori, without receiving the new drug, they will "die within a year or two. In light of all this, as one leading the diagnosis and treatment of the disease in Israel, I see an urgent need to include the drug in the drug basket. "Dr. Dori also warned the basket committee that in recent years, and even before the new drug came into use," two patients in the country have already died of the disease in agony. many".

The drug of choice is the ONPATTRO drug from the US drug company ALNYLAM, which is imported into Israel by Madison. The new drug that is infused is a special genetic drug that, in an innovative mechanism, blocks and neutralizes the genetic material that causes the disease and thus reduces the production of the particular protein in the liver that causes the disease. The American researchers who discovered the mechanism that led to the drug's development were awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in 2006. The drug sought for the basket is already included in the public drug baskets in some European countries, including the UK and Germany, and has already been approved for use in the US, Japan, Canada and European countries.

Dr. Amir Dori, senior Sheba neurologist // Photo: Coco

However, although the expensive drug itself is now given as a donation by the pharmaceutical company, patients at Maccabi and National Health Centers have to face the refusal of the funds to fund hospitalization for the purpose of administering the drug given as an infusion with medical accompaniment. This creates an absurd situation where patients receive a donation. The pharmaceutical company is the cost-saving medicine, although it is not yet included in the basket, but Maccabi and Leumi health funds refuse to pay only the cost of hospitalization (the cost of hospitalization is NIS 1,300). Administering the drug.

As a result, patients had to pay out of pocket, or the pharmaceutical company very exceptionally appointed the very hospitalization. In recent weeks, Dr. Dori has written to Maccabi (only two patients currently in need of medicine) and to a national (only one patient currently in need of medicine) and asked them to reimburse the hospital for life-saving medication, but the two funds refuse to fund The hospitalization.

The new data on the new drug was presented at the annual European Conference on Disease, held in early September in Berlin. The conference was attended by representatives of the patients and doctors association, and journalists invited by the pharmaceutical company, among others, also the signer Maale. No response was received from Maccabi and Leumi hospitals.

Source: israelhayom

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