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Scarce fever juice
Photo: IMAGO/Florian Gaertner/photothek.de / IMAGO/photothek
In view of supply bottlenecks for medicines, the Marburger Bund physicians' union is calling on the federal government to fundamentally change direction when it comes to medicine imports.
“Supply security requires significantly more transparency and completely new supply chains for medicines and their raw materials: Away from being dependent on Chinese and Indian producers and towards expanding medicine production in the EU,” said the chairwoman of the Marburg Association, Susanne Johna, to SPIEGEL .
"It's not just the Minister of Health who's here, the Minister of Economics is also in demand," emphasized Johna.
The cornerstones against the shortage of medicines recently presented by Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) contained “important first steps”, but they did not solve the basic problem.
»Higher prices for generic drugs can be an incentive to increase production.
However, the main reason for the shortage of medicines is not discount agreements for individual medicines, but rather insecure supply chains,” said Johna.
In view of the worsening corona situation in China, the chairwoman of the Marburg Association expects the supply in this country to deteriorate: »The high corona sickness rate in China has resulted in temporary production losses on site, which should further tighten our supply of medical raw materials and end products« , said Johna.
“The current situation highlights the need to diversify our drug supply,” she affirmed.
Strengthening the EU as a pharmaceutical location would bring further benefits: "Relocating pharmaceutical production to Europe would not only result in security of supply, but also in higher labor and environmental standards." At present, antibiotics production in many places in Asia is a burden on the environment, he says Johna.
Shortly before Christmas, Minister of Health Lauterbach presented key points for better care, for example with fever syrup and antibiotics.
For example, pharmacists should be able to dispense other comparable medicines if they do not have fever syrup.
They receive an additional payment of 50 cents for this.
Discount contracts between health insurance companies and manufacturers are also to be restricted – for example in the case of pediatric medicines.
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