Source: TheTimes
GREEK cancer patients will be deprived of a life-saving drug after the German company that produces it stopped deliveries to the country’s state-run hospitals because of unpaid bills.
In the latest row between Berlin and Athens, Merck blocked shipments of Erbitux, a drug for bowel cancer, to the Greek public health system although it said that private patients would still be able to buy the expensive drug.
The pharmaceutical industry says that Greece owes E1.7 billion ($2.1bn) in unpaid bills. Drug companies said that corruption was partly to blame, noting that one-quarter of all drugs sent to Greece were re-sold abroad for profit by middlemen.
German pharmaceutical companies have offered to cap this year’s bill to the Greek public health sector at E2.9bn provided that Greece honours its E1.7bn debt that stretches back several years.
“We need to see a stability agreement to meet this year’s numbers and cuts for following years in Greece, and some reforms implemented in a rational way,” said Richard Bergstrom, head of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
Merck is not the first company to limit supplies. Biotest, a smaller German firm, announced recently that it was stopping exports of blood plasma products to treat burn victims and haemophiliacs after the health system failed to pay E7 million.
GREEK WORLD MEDIA 