Drug shortages, the list has grown by 70% from 2019 to today. Thus the cross-border medicine workers return between Como and Chiasso.
Until five years ago the national medicine agency counted 2,132 medicines missing on the internal market, this list updated to the current month now includes 3,633 medicines not available. An increase, as mentioned, equal to 70%. It is true that there are still 2,689 alternative medicines, but in many cases it becomes complicated for doctors and pharmacists to suggest a correct therapy, especially for those patients who have been accustomed to taking the same pills for many years. Anti-inflammatories, antiepileptics, antibiotics, there are various aids that are absent from production, or whose active ingredients are not available from local companies. The problem exploded during the pandemic.
«We have become dependent on the Indian and Chinese markets – he confirms Giuseppe De Filippis, president of the Order of Pharmacists of Como – also for reasons of low costs some products no longer arrive here. Not necessarily life-saving drugs, even simple anti-allergic drugs which, for example, are still available in Switzerland.” Across the border there are cyclically available drugs that the people of Como go to buy in the pharmacies of Chiasso. It has already happened with common aids such as Valsartan, an active ingredient against hypertension, with expensive anticancer drugs, or Questran for intestinal pathologies and Aldomet 500 for pregnant women with blood pressure problems.
«Yes, but even here after the pandemic the problem of drug shortages has worsened – he explains Chiara Merloni, from the historic pharmacy of the same name in Chiasso –. There are various medicines for which we suffer long-lasting shortages. Here it happens in particular with psychotropic drugs, benzodiazepines, or for example with a very common anxiolytic medicine used to sleep, called Tavor in Italy. Therefore there is also movement in the opposite direction. Many Ticino people come to Como to buy medicines, it is often family doctors who directly suggest this option to patients.” Sometimes also for price reasons, the costs here are lower. In fact, since mid-2023 the number of prescriptions signed by doctors from Italian-speaking Switzerland presented in Como pharmacies has increased. The Ticino pharmacists’ association has also launched an appeal on the subject, as has the Como authority itself. Beyond customs, however, at least for the most important garrisons, an answer has been given.
«The quota has been introduced for some devices – explains Merloni – in particular for some time for antibiotics, certain types are now sold individually, we have to dispense them in bulk, as a single tablet. The doctor must communicate dosage and duration and the pharmacist gives the patient the exact quantity. This way we avoid waste and also combat the phenomenon linked to bacterial resistance.” Taking the wrong dose of antibiotics sometimes allows pathogens to survive and learn to counteract the action of the medicines. Similar experiments for the sale of bulk drugs in Italy have never really taken hold.
