Parliament rejects measures to overcome the shortage of medicines in Portugal

Most parties defended this Friday measures to overcome the shortage of medicines in Portugal and access to medicines and medical devices, as well as their co-payment, but the projects were rejected in parliament.

In her speech at the bills and resolutions plenary session, PCP’s Paula Santos advocated the importance of providing the National Medical Laboratory with funds, equipment and workers so that the country has “more production and drugs cost less to users and to the States.”

“We know very well that for other parties, the most important thing is the interests and profits, in this particular case, of the pharmaceutical industry,” but, he stressed, this is not a “market discussion”, but “a discussion of health and access to medicines.”

Rui Tavares of Livre also highlighted the importance of the National Medicines Laboratory in times like the ones we are living through, “in times of war, inflation and supply chain disruptions.”

“It is absolutely essential that the state has guarantees and that it has its own industrial capacity for the production of medicines,” he said.

MP Inés Sousa Real of PAN also defended that the Laboratory should be “actively involved in dealing with cases of depletion of ‘stocks’ at the national level or in cases where it is necessary to ensure access to overly expensive medicines, such as those needed for rare and very rare diseases. “, but added that “this is not the rule, but the exception.”

“We do not want the National Medicines Laboratory to compete with the pharmaceutical industry, but we want it to be its backup and complement whenever it fails to respond to the needs of the market and social networks and, above all, to those who suffering from these diseases,” he said.

Pedro Frazao of Chega stated that “national pharmaceutical reindustrialization” should be promoted and therefore said that his parliamentary group supported some of the initiatives being discussed.

However, he said that “it will take years” and therefore the shortage of medicines should be solved with the proposal they presented for the “emergency drug import model”, which follows the example of many European countries that have already successfully implemented this system, namely Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Cyprus or Lithuania.

PSD’s Fernanda Vélez acknowledged that the shortage of medicines “is a problem that affects millions of Portuguese”, especially chronically ill people, but believes that “not demagogic, unreasonable or just voluntaristic and thoughtless measures that effectively solved the problems of Portuguese access to medicines and other health products.”

“Defending the quality of life of the Portuguese is undoubtedly a priority for the PSD, but unlike other parties, we are guided by parameters that do not include populist politics, so we will not follow some of the initiatives discussed today,” said Fernanda Vélez.

Socialist MP Ana Isabel Santos, in turn, stressed that the Ministry of Health has proposed a set of measures to facilitate access to medicines and prevent gap situations, responding to the concerns of users, healthcare professionals and the medical sector.

MP Joana Carneiro of the Liberal Initiative said it was unacceptable that “someone, especially the most vulnerable, should be prevented from accessing healthcare by lack of money or state inertia.”

In his opinion, “community pharmacies, by their nature and capillarity, play a decisive role, and for this reason their role needs to be strengthened”, and on the other hand, “it is necessary to increase the competitiveness of the market”. , guaranteeing that the costs for people do not increase.

At the end of the debate, Pedro Filipe Soares of Block de Esquerda stated that, contrary to what was said during the debate, “this [falta de medicamentos] it is not a national problem and it has a fundamental reason why it is called capitalism.

“That’s why the drug shortage is happening in Portugal, it’s happening in Chega’s paradise, that is, in Hungary, which is currently experiencing a serious shortage of medicines (…) and it’s happening in the liberal paradise of the Liberal Initiative called the United States of America. America, which is experiencing a serious lack of access to medicines,” he criticized, stressing that this is because “what has ordered the development of countries in recent decades has been the market, not the protection of the sovereignty of states.”

So, he asked, “who is afraid of the products of the National Drug Laboratory.”

There were two bills under discussion from Bloco de Esquerda, two from PCP, three from PAN and a draft resolution (recommendation to the government) from Chega, PCP and two from the Liberal Initiative, all of which were rejected.