Response Side to Xantho on drugs: SYRIZA populism in a pan-European problem

In response to the head of the Health Department of SYRIZA, A. Xanthos, on the issue of the lack of medicines, the Minister of Health Thanos Pleuris states that the problem of lack of specific medicines is linked to the high demand and low production created by the global inability of companies to meet the needs. “In this direction and to deal with a problem that plagues all countries due to the high demand with the explosion of infections and insufficient production, we have carried out total bans on exports without a time limit and controls with sanctions, both on pharmaceutical companies, as well as in pharmaceutical warehouses, with reference to the existence of sufficient stocks and parallel exports. In fact, we have recorded all the stocks, and any company that does not cooperate. we are suspending operations”, says the Minister of Health.

These initiatives are recognized by all those involved in the supply chain of medicines, adds Th. Pleuris and says that the goal is to reduce the consequences of the problem and serve the citizens.

“SYRIZA, in its popular populism, with the sole purpose of small-party profit from a global problem, reaches the point of blaming us for the shortages recorded throughout the EU, even in the countries where the prices of medicines are high, due to the reduction in production in the countries that have the raw materials. Mr. Xanthos, in his long statement, has no proposal. The SYRIZA government that illegally ‘forgot’ in 2015 to issue a price list to reduce drug prices favoring the pharmaceutical industry would do well not to talk about drug interests in a government that has achieved the biggest discounts it has ever given the pharmaceutical industry” concludes the Minister of Health.

The statements of Andreas Xanthos

“The warnings of doctors and pharmacists for more than a year have not ‘moved’ anyone,” says Mr. Xanthos and adds: “The Mitsotakis government is following, as in the energy and inflationary crisis, the same failed ‘recipe’ : does not intervene in time and drastically in the market, invokes the international dimension of the problem, and then, when the situation gets out of hand, is forced to take piecemeal, incomplete and therefore ineffective measures, such as e.g. the belated and flawed ban on parallel exports”.

He then argues that “it is not a question of managerial inadequacy. It is a matter of neoliberal dogma about the supposed ability of the market to regulate itself without strong government intervention. But it is also a question of the influence of business interests in the field of private pharmacies, which profit uncontrollably and ‘regularly’, making available abroad preparations at much higher prices, which of course the domestic market lacks”.

He also refers to the Minister of Health, Thanos Pleuris, saying that he “boasts that he closed 2 pharmacies that refused the inspection. What about the rest of the pharmacies? When will they be checked? What are the findings of any audits that have been carried out? And IFET (the state pharmaceutical warehouse, which has to cover the country’s needs with medicines that are in short supply with imports from abroad) what exactly is it doing in the face of such an unprecedented shortage of basic medicines? Or is it ‘not in time’ because it (IFET) is also dealing with illegal drug exports, as reported by SYRIZA-PS to the prosecutor?”

Mr. Xanthos proposes the following: “The only drastic solution today is the indefinite prohibition of parallel exports of preparations that are in systematic shortage and the real time control of pharmaceutical warehouses by the EOF, the strict observance of the obligation of pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical warehouses for three-month stocks, as well as the creation of a ‘national stock’ of vital drugs, such as antibiotics, analgesics, antituberculosis, etc.”

In closing, he argues that “the pandemic has proven that the ‘free market’ does not work in conditions of a health crisis and that patients’ unhindered access to the necessary medicines is a fundamental social right, which the State can and must ensure with strong state intervention. Against which, however, the Mitsotakis government is ‘allergic’. The change of course in political matters is now vital and for … reasons of Public Health!”.

RES-EMP

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