HEALTH Minister Stavros Malas has pledged to investigate the high cost of medication in Cyprus compared to other EU member states.
“I have asked for information on the price of medication in Cyprus compared to other countries [from the Pharmaceutical Services]……. I have asked for us to come together with further information in a month so we can discuss the matter again,” Malas said yesterday.
The issue came to light in an article in daily Politis yesterday in a price comparison between Cyprus and Greece, which claimed that the cost of medication in Cyprus is one of the highest in the EU.
A price comparison with medication sold in Greece reveals that Panadol Actifast Tabs 500mg are sold in Cyprus at a retail price of €3.42, whereas in Greece they are sold for €0.65.
However this tremendous discrepancy in price does not simply include basic pain relief, but also antibiotics such as Dalacin and Augmentin, cancer medication such as Casodex and Suprefact, along with anti-depression medication such as Xanax and Lexotanil, among others.
Malas clarified that the model used to determine price is one founded by a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and implemented in 2005.
This specific methodology uses other EU countries as a marker by taking a country where medication is considered to be cheap, one where they are expensive and two countries whose prices are in the middle. An average of these countries is then used to determine medication prices in Cyprus.
Malas said that for the moment he could not confirm whether the method used was the problem. “We will look into whether we should be using another method,” he said.
However he explained that medication sold in Cyprus was not always more expensive than that sold in Greece. “If the cost of medication in certain other countries goes down then they go down for us too,” he said.
Questioned as to whether former Health Minister Christos Patsalides was involved in any decision making that resulted in such high prices he said: “No the new policy on pricing medication in Cyprus came about before Mr Patsalides took over the post.”
He said that he would also ask for a price comparison study to determine whether Cyprus was one of the countries with the most expensive medications.
Pharmaceutical company Medochemie Ltd, who were mentioned in the Politis article as one company whose medication was sold at a higher price in Cyprus than Greece, responded that the article had misrepresented the system of pricing.
Head of sales for the Cypriot market at Medochemie, Nicolaos Christides confirmed that according to the method used to price medication, when the cost goes down in certain other countries it does so in Cyprus too.
“The cost of medication in Cyprus is steady and you could even say that it’s dropping,” said Christides.
