The president of the Health Cluster Portugal (HCP), Guy Villax, defends that the prices of generic medicines “clearly should go up”. “In concrete terms, I think that if inflation is 8 or 9% then prices should necessarily rise 8 or 9% so that we are not worse off”, stated Guy Villax in interview with Negócios and Antena1.
In the same interview, the president of the HCP, an organization that brings together more than 200 entities in the health sector, mentions that even a price update of this magnitude “does not compensate for the erosion in drug prices in Portugal over the last ten years, namely the most expensive drugs. cheap ones, namely the generic ones”.
“And this is very serious, because there are – coming back, not coming back – medicines that disappear from the market. Why? Because prices are so low that there is no reason to produce and sell them”, noted the manager, noting that “this situation of scarcity of generic medicines is not just in Portugal, it is in all countries of Europe and the United States ”.
“If prices don’t go up and costs go up, for example, by 10%, then there is a margin that evaporates, disappears. If there is no margin, companies lose strength”, added Guy Villax.
The theme had already been underlined by the president of Apifarma – Associação Portuguesa da Indústria Farmacêutica, João Almeida Lopes, when, earlier this month, he went to Parliament to talk about the lack of some medicines in pharmacies.
“Even Asia stopped producing some active substances because they lost their value”, declared the leader of Apifarma to the deputies.
And also the founder of the Portuguese pharmaceutical Bluepharma, Paulo Barradas, drew attention, in an interview to Expresso, to the challenges of the industry, faced with increases of 100% and 150% in the prices of some raw materials.