The project, coordinated by AIFA and supported by the ISS, will allow the dissemination of good practices to prevent and mitigate the unavailability of drugs
A three-year plan to coordinate and harmonize existing national systems against drug shortages. It is the European "Joint Action" project which, with a budget of about 10 million euros, was born within the European Public Health Program and was built giving priority to cooperation between institutions: the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA ), in collaboration with the National Blood and Transplant Centers of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, led the elaboration of the proposed European joint action.
The consortium of partners of the pan-European initiative against drug shortages led by Italy includes twenty-seven European pharmaceutical and health authorities, representing twenty-one Member States of the European Union and Norway and thus almost entirely covers the European Economic Area. It also has the external support of European organizations and networks that will allow to involve at the operational level even the few Member States that have not been able to join the project directly (Bulgaria, Greece, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Slovak Republic).
The coordination role by AIFA of a thematic initiative so important in geographical and economic terms testifies to the value of the initiatives to combat shortages and unavailability carried out in our country: the experience in intersectoral dialogue gained in forums such as the Technical Roundtable Unavailability o the Table on the availability of immunoglobulins has allowed the establishment of a large and collaborative network of experts, where all Member States have been able to contribute to the construction of an articulated plan, aimed at enhancing the best existing tools and building new ones, to guarantee the timeliness of care for European patients even during times of emergency such as those experienced in recent years.
DEEPENING. The project proposal, including the financing and the final composition of the consortium, has been submitted for evaluation by the European Commission: in the event of a positive evaluation, the activities foreseen by the operational plan will be able to start already before the end of 2022.
The consortium led by Italy includes pharmaceutical agencies and health institutions from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Holland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Hungary. Some of the countries that are not part of the consortium, such as Malta, have already confirmed their interest in participating in the operational phases of the initiative, which the consortium expects to be able to extend to a wider area, given the collaborations that AIFA has already in place through other European projects, such as the recent MEDI-THEFT, focused on the fight against pharmaceutical crime, which sees the participation of the authorities of Serbia and Montenegro.