Romania has called on the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for help with its immunoglobulin crisis, Health Minister Sorina Pintea announced on Monday.
"In order to solve this problem, Romania has suspended the clawback tax on this product for a period of two years and yet nothing happened. This March, no immunoglobulin vial is expected in the country. There are some promises for April, but I do not believe in these promises, so I informed the Prime Minister's Cabinet today and we agreed to start this procedure. This procedure is practically an alert at European level requesting immunoglobulin for Romania. That means that this request of ours was issued by the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations (IGSU); it is published in an online system at the European level of the mechanism and the states that have access to this system make available to us the quantities that they have in their country. I learned this information on Saturday and, to tell you frankly, I did not believe it. I had a meeting on February 14 with distributors, and promises were different. There are many patients who are in need of immunoglobulin right now," Pintea told Antena 3 private broadcaster.
According to her, calling on this mechanism was absolutely necessary.
"We began asking for data from partner countries two weeks ago. Unfortunately, we did not find the necessary answer where we looked for. We still have requests sent to various embassies, but they probably did not have the physical time to respond to those requests. I thought we were running out of time," said Pintea.
She said that monthly Romania needs 5,000 immunoglobulin vials of 2.5 milligrams.
"This week we have meetings with the producers; we have already met the distributors. I hope to reach a common denominator because I do not want this situation to linger. (...) A task force has been operational at the Health Ministry for two weeks now, trying to come up with solutions. This is really a desperate situation because there are very many patients who have not been treated in a long time," said Pintea.
AGERPRES .
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