08/24/2024 – 9:16
A statement by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) demanding that the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) act quickly in releasing medicines caused discomfort with the agency’s CEO, Antonio Barra Torres, who responded to the statement in an open letter.
Lula was speaking at the inauguration of the EMS synthetic polypeptide factory in Hortolândia, in the interior of São Paulo, this Friday, the 23rd, when he mentioned a demand made by the president of the pharmaceutical group NC, Carlos Sanchez. “Anvisa needs to move a little faster to approve the requests that are there, because it is not possible for people not to be able to buy medicine because Anvisa does not authorize it”, stated the president.
The PT member then adopted a harsher tone when demanding that the agency: “When someone from Anvisa realizes that one of their relatives died because the medicine that could have been produced here was not produced, because they did not allow it, then we will be able to make it act faster and better serve the interests of our country.”
Torres, in turn, says that Anvisa has been losing employees in recent years without the positions being filled, and that the federal government was warned that the “insufficient number of employees would have a direct impact on the fulfillment of the agency’s mission”.
The letter also mentions that the federal administration released only 50 vacancies out of the 120 available in 2023 for public examinations and that Anvisa loaned 35 servers requested to work in other instances.
“Since the beginning of the current government, Anvisa has sent 26 official letters explaining the problem of staff shortages and has participated in meetings with ministers on the subject. With an insufficient number of workers and tasks that are only increasing, the time to perform such tasks can only become longer,” says Torres.
#Lulas #demand #speed #releasing #medicines #generates #friction #Anvisa #director