Reading Stephen Calleja’s article “Labour will have the last laugh” (TMIS, 16 January), I came across the following: “And then the PN has the cheek to boast about small reductions in the price of pharmaceuticals.” Please allow me to expand on Mr Calleja’s brief reference to “small reductions” in the price of medicines.
I have written a number of letters in the past in other newspapers on the scandalously high prices existing in Malta when compared to prices found in other European countries. In a letter I wrote in The Times of 25 October 2010, I provided proof − copy of receipt which I sent to the editor, how the medicine Zocor 20mg, box of 28 pills, sells in Malta for €24.74, while a similar box of 28 pills was purchased by my partner in Istanbul for just €3 (5 Turkish lira)!
On 28 October 2010, the communications coordinator of Dr Chris Said’s secretariat, Mario Xuereb, replied in The Times. Among other things, Mr Xuereb wrote: “Prices of medicines vary from country to country, and comparing the price with one particular country is not realistic.” I wrote back on 2 November 2010. I pointed out to Mr Xuereb that, despite the much-trumpeted reduction of 30 per cent in the price of Zocor 20mg pills (from €34 to €24.74), the price in Malta still remained “eight times higher than in Istanbul”! Dr Said’s secretariat never replied.
On 10 November 2010, another story was published, this time in l-orizzont about the price of another medicine − Tegretol 200mg, 50 pills per box. The writer of that story, Alfred Vella said that in Malta such a box of Tegretol pills costs €18.12. In various cities in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia) precisely the same box of pills sells for €3.80. Five times less than in Malta. Mr Vella also gave the prices he found in other European cities: Marseilles at €5.75, Rome and Milan at €5.70 and in Greece at €4.20. No comment ever came from Dr Said’s secretariat to deny or correct that story!
This is why I am never impressed when reading or hearing Dr Said proudly announcing some new reduction in the price of some new medicines, when prices in Malta for a number of medicines remain between three times to eight times costlier than prices found in some other EU and non-EU European countries.
In my view, if Dr Said and the Nationalist Party government truly want to protect Maltese and Gozitan consumers from this “daylight robbery” taking place, they should ensure that prices of medicines in Malta be very near or equivalent to prices found in other Mediterranean European countries, where wages and pensions are more or less equivalent to ours such as in Spain, Italy and Greece.
Eddy Privitera
MOSTA