Fedez reports: «The pancreatic enzymes cannot be found». The ministry's response. What to do

The alarm on pancreatic enzyme deficiency Fedez launched it with a post on Instagram: «I'm receiving lots of emails about a problem that I've also encountered, having had pancreas surgery, like other patients I need to take pancreatic enzymes to be able to eat and assimilate food. For a month now it seems like they haven't been found.” The rapper explained that he had a small supply of pancreatic enzymes, but “I'm running out of them and I can't find them.”
What is going on?

In reality, as the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) had already explained in a note last October, these pancrelipase-based medicines are currently distributed in a contingent mannerbecause of production problems and high demand. And the shortage will likely last until December 2025.
Today, after Fedez's cry of alarm, the Ministry of Health specified that «it is one known situation and independent from the regulatory activities of AIFAThat has long provided patients and healthcare workers with adequate information, including operational information» and that «to date the only manufacturing company has communicated the impossibility of satisfying demand due to excess demand. However, as already communicated by AIFA through the procedures ordinarily used in case of drug shortagesthe Agency allows healthcare facilities to import similar medicines authorized abroad, in the event that the structures themselves encounter discontinuities in supply, at the level of the distribution networks to which they have access. Furthermore, the pharmacies that cannot find the product in the usual distribution channels they can carry out a direct order to the owner (of the marketing authorization of the drug, ed.) through the appropriate Customer Service service”.

Medicine shortages are also seen for other drugs, including many life-savers. A long-standing problem, just think that the list of temporarily lacking drugs on the website of the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) includes almost 3,500 drugs, which for various reasons cannot be found in pharmacies.

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