Pharmaceutical industry

A bill recently voted by the Greek Parliament gives pharmaceutical firms and other healthcare providers that owe money to state healthcare provider EOPYY the facility to settle their debts in 120 monthly installments, just like other debtors to public bodies, such as social security funds.

Financial crimes investigators in the port city of Piraeus had almost completed the count of a haul of counterfeit drugs seized from a container terminal on Tuesday morning, saying it consists of an estimated 23 million pills of the drug fenetylline, stamped to look like the Captagon brand.

Bulgaria is involved in an international drug scandal. It's about counterfeit packs of cancer medicines.

Packages are exported from our country to the Netherlands. Medicines are for patients who are treated in a hospital. This is the first case of forgery caught by the European medicines review system, bTV reported.

Within hours of the owner of an advertising agency telling a Greek corruption prosecutor that he paid an unnamed representative of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis some 400,000 euros, the executive, Filistor Destempasidis, issued a statement rejecting the claims as "monstrous degeneracy" and pledged to take legal action.

The owner of an advertising agency gave his testimony to a corruption prosecutor in Athens as part of the Novartis probe on Wednesday, during which he argued that he had never paid any bribes to politicians accused of allegedly taking bribes from the Swiss pharmaceutical firm in exchange for preferential treatment.

Greece has among the highest per capita private spending on pharmaceuticals in the European Union, ranking fifth among the 22 member-states for which there are available figures.
The data, concerning 2016, showed that each Greek spent an average of 171 euros per year on drugs, vaccines, bandages etc, compared to an EU mean rate of 135 euros/year.

With the alleged Novartis bribery scandal falling apart and failing to deal a blow to its political opponents, the government has reportedly found itself on the back foot almost a month before European and local elections.

There can be no doubt that the Novartis scandal is real. It is international and is being investigated in various countries, especially in the US, and it involves bribes paid to doctors, researchers, and clinical labs.

The involvement of politicians, if it is true, is not the main issue, at least based on the exceptionally strict probe by US authorities.

Tax collection measures such as the rebate and clawback systems that prevent excessive state spending on pharmaceuticals are hindering the penetration of the Greek market by innovative drugs, says Bruno Wohlschlegel, head of Europe at the Merck Group.

The government unexpectedly tabled a law amendment in Parliament on Wednesday which provides for an increase in the prices of pharmaceutical products by up to 10 percent compared to the previous price list.