Germs invulnerable to drugs and especially to Antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs'which already represent a “creeping pandemic in progress”, are one of the first challenges that the new Italian drug agency Aifa will be called upon to face. The appeal to put this issue at the top of the agenda of the national regulatory body comes from Italian Society of Virology (Siv-Isv), in a letter signed by the president Arnaldo Caruso and anticipated at Adnkronos Salute. Italian virologists express satisfaction with their colleague's confirmation Giorgio Palù to the presidency of AIFA and hope that the renewed agency will pay particular attention to the 'invisible enemies' that threaten the health of the planet.
“With the new reform” of AIFA “and consequently with the powers that the president finally comes to exercise – write the Siv-Isv experts – we are certain that Professor Palù will be able to carry forward, with tenacity and authority, some strategic projects for our country, including the development of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, leading sectors of many advanced nations. We also hope” that Palù, “as an internationally renowned virologist as he was in the academic field (president of the Italian Society of Virology and of the European Society of Virology)”, pays “particular attention to the approval of research projects, even basic ones, within topics aimed at understanding and solving the problems of virus resistance to antiviral drugs and even more so of bacteria to antibiotics”, to be considered as a “real creeping pandemic in progress”.
The letter from Italian virologists to AIFA
For Italian virologists, Palù will be the right guide to allow the new Aifa to overcome some critical issues that emerged during the Covid emergency. “We learn with great satisfaction – we read in the letter – the confirmation of Professor Giorgio Palù at the helm of AIFA, the Italian Medicines Agency. Professor Palù was able to guide AIFA in the most critical moments of the pandemic emergency and we are certain that will be able to give this Agency a strong innovative impulse, not only due to the experience gained in the years spent at the helm of the same, but due to the fact that the AIFA reform, finally completed, gives it greater power and at the same time greater responsibility. In fact, for the first time in the history of AIFA, Professor Palù will be a president with representative and, finally, also decision-making power.
“The Virology Society – recalls its president – had already expressed doubts about AIFA's operational organization in times of pandemic, sending an official letter to the then Prime Minister the Honorable Mario Draghi, which unfortunately remained unanswered. In this letter we underlined how, as external spectators, they affected us some often contradictory AIFA decisions, communicated among other things in an equally unclear and reassuring way to the population, then not attributable to the figure of the president of the Agency. Furthermore, there was the impression that AIFA's activity, of central importance for the proper functioning of our national health system, was burdened by a notable bureaucratizationwhich led her to be not very timely and not sufficiently oriented towards science and innovation”. The new structure of the national regulatory body, with Palù at the helm, will instead allow “the relaunch of an Agency of central importance for the proper functioning of our national health system”, the Siv-Isv virologists are convinced, congratulating their past president and wishing him “a fruitful job”.
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