Many people are now afraid of getting sick. The reason is the prevailing shortage of numerous medicines. About 600 medicines are currently not available or only available to a very limited extent in the country. Given the dramatic situation, the Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Pharmig) is urging on the one hand to bring production back to Europe and on the other hand to adjust drug prices to inflation.
“The current situation is due to the fact that we have an extremely high demand for colds and painkillers,” Pharmig’s secretary general Alexander Herzog said at a press conference in Vienna. The wave of illness exceeded the experts’ expectations. In the event of a slowdown, some products are likely to relax faster than others and production facilities will at least run at full capacity, Bernhard Wittmann, Pharmig’s vice president, points out.
According to the two industry representatives, two measures in particular could ease the supply crisis in the longer term: higher prices and European production. “Painkillers and antibiotics sometimes cost less than a sausage roll,” says Herzog. As a result, production has shifted to Asia. “We don’t think that’s a good thing,” said Pharmig’s secretary general, who saw more of a “supply bottleneck” than a “supply bottleneck.” “We would do well to set up local supply,” explains Wittmann.
Pricing: “Need an automated process”
“What we need is that we can adjust our prices to the rate of inflation,” the industry representative demanded. The pharmaceutical industry in Austria is not allowed to raise prices itself, but each company must then submit an application to social security. This is a tedious process that is usually decided negatively, explains Herzog. It needs an automated process.
Wittmann said domestic pharmaceutical companies have made “incredible investments” over the past 10 to 20 years, for example in quality assurance and protection against counterfeiting. That was not reflected on the price side. “Prices that stay the same for 10 or 20 years don’t work,” he stressed. Herzog warned that the Austrian reimbursement system looks at the price per package rather than the benefits to society as a whole.
The flu epidemic is leveling off
The flu epidemic that came early and massively this winter is still on the wane. However, the number of infections was still relatively high, according to data from the week before from Vienna. The health department in the federal capital estimated 13,150 new cases of flu and flu-like illnesses for calendar week 2 (see also chart above). That is comparable to the number at the peak of the last flu epidemic before the corona pandemic in the 2019/2020 season.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
