Filenews 18 November 2022 - by Marilena Panayi
In three to four years, at best, the drugs approved in Europe in 2022 will be included in the prescription of the Cypriot General Health System, while applications for approval of dozens of formulations that have accumulated, due to the time-consuming procedures followed by the Health Insurance Organization, are already pending, argues the Association of Pharmaceutical Companies.
He emphasizes that "today, around 220 medicines, most of which are no longer new, are still outside the GHS". Most of them, as the president of the Cyprus Association of Pharmaceutical Research and Development Companies Kyriakos Mikellis said speaking to "F", "should already be available through the health system, which, among other things, would reduce the cost that the state has to pay".
"The examination of applications for the inclusion of medicines in the previous system (by the Ministry of Health) had stopped in 2018 before the implementation of the GHS (since the procedures had to be transferred to the HIO), as a result of which a huge number of applications for examination have accumulated over the years", he added and noted: "If one considers that on average around 40 new drugs receive approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) every year, the problem is even greater."
With this data, the president of KEFEA continued, "and if something drastic is not done immediately, the drugs that have been approved in 2022 by the EMA, at best, will be examined after three to four years. This is not healthy for a health system."
