(ANSA) - Rome, April 20 - A study revealed Monday that the Italian public health system makes direct investments of 1 to 2.6 billion euros annually, but just two innovative pharmaceutical treatments out of 10 pay off research and development costs ploughed into them.
The report Monitor Biomedico 2015, conducted by the social and economic research group CENSIS as part of this Forum per la Ricerca Biomedica (Forum for Biomedical Research), cited the recent case of the anti-hepatitis C medication Sofosbuvir as emblematic. The cost of a therapeutic cycle of the drug is 37,000 euros for public health structures, but the additional allocation of government funds for this therapy has so far been about one billion euros for two years, and is believed to be able to involve about 50,000 patients compared to an estimated 1.5 million people in Italy who have contracted the virus, and a number of actively ill that exceeds 300,000.
Two in 10 innovative pharmaceuticals pay off, CENSIS finds
Access to treatments still fall short of need