According to the Greek drug regulator, the National Organization for Medicines, foreign drugmakers have reduced their drug supplies to the country by 90%. The shortages are affecting treatments for arthritis, hepatitis C and hypertension, cholesterol-lowering agents, antipsychotics, antibiotics, anaesthetics and immunomodulators used to treat bowel disease.

The government has drawn up a list of more than 50 pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi, that it accuses of halting or planning to halt supplies because of low prices in the country. While some companies admitted not supplying some medicines – Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi all said that a few products had been withheld – others (AstraZeneca and GSK) denied that they had any plans to halt supplies.

The companies have been accused of ceasing supplies ‘because Greece is not profitable for them and they are worried that their products will be exported by traders to other richer countries through parallel trade as Greece has the lowest medicine prices in Europe according to Professor Yannis Tountas, President of the National Organization for Medicines.

Greece’s social insurance funds and hospitals owe pharmaceutical companies about Euros 1.9 billion, a debt going back to 2011, which is not helping matters. Roche admitted it had withheld supplies to public hospitals that owed the company Euros 200 million. GSK, on the other hand, said that it had maintained the uninterrupted supply to Greek public hospitals with all its products irrespective of the accumulated debts.

The pharmaceutical industry has hit back at the Greek Government, saying that many of the shortages are caused by products being exported through parallel trade and not by the action of drugmakers. Greece’s drug prices are at least 20% lower than the lowest prices in Europe, fuelling parallel trade. The industry has urged the government to address this by bringing in a new pricing system to make Greek drug prices closer to the European average.

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Greece drug shortages

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