MILAN (ITALPRESS) – Plasma drugs are obtained from the liquid part of the blood, in which there are some basic proteins for the body. These proteins are separated, purified and then, through a complex industrial process that lasts even 12 months – with very strict controls, also by health authorities – the drug produced is ready and safe to be distributed and arrive to patients. In Italy, in the plasma industry, five companies operate – national companies with international vocations and important enterprises with foreign capital – employing, among researchers and production workers, about 1700 people. Production in 2024 was around 350 million euros. Interviewed by the agency Italpress, the president of the Emoderivati Group of Farmindustria, Francesco Carugi, explained how the industry of plasmadrugs carries out a fundamental work for the Italian health system. “We operate substantially on two channels: on the one hand we support the national self-sufficiency system, which in Italy collects from donors over 900.000 kg of plasma – he said -. Companies take that plasma, work it, transform it and make it available to patients. Then we also operate on a second channel, because since the self-sufficiency system fails to fully respond to the therapeutic needs of patients, companies compensate for this deficiency through drugs produced with foreign plasma, mainly from the United States, but also European plasma”. “Hemoderivates are irreplaceable drugs for some rare diseases such as primary or secondary immunodeficiencies, hereditary angioedema, alpha deficiency 1 anti-tripsina and a whole series of very serious diseases such as neurological or oncoematological forms or infectious, viral and bacterial forms as a result of organ transplantation – Carugi added. As drugs that could be characterized by periods of deficiency, the European Commission recently incorporated them into the Critical Medical Act, which is a document that should protect all drugs considered essential and with a fragile supply chain to ensure care to patients suffering often from rare diseases.” “It is fundamental – it concluded – that the government adopts measures to break down barriers that reduce the competitiveness of Italy in the supply of these drugs. – In fact, the rules on plasma-derived products produced by plasma collected in Italy – by processing by pharmaceutical companies on behalf of consortia on the national territory – with those on drugs produced by foreign plasma, which must be subject to a completely different regulatory iter. We ask that we consider the sector of strategic plasma because when products are lacking it is a national security problem. And that plasma-deriveds are excluded from the roof of expenditure on equal resources allocated on direct expenditure. Finally, we ask for greater attention to the programming of the therapeutic needs of patients, so that companies can plan ahead, given the long production times of a plasmaderivato, the quantities of therapies to allocate in Italy”.
– Photo press office Farmindustria –
(ITALPRESS).
