A patient with metastatic breast cancer was, until yesterday, deprived of medication because the medicine she needed was out of stock at the SESARAM Pharmacy.
As she told JM, she was medicated with Ribociclib, but this drug caused side effects, namely a drop in white blood cells and platelets.
The alternative would be Abemaciclid, as recommended by the doctor, but he soon found out that this medicine is not available in the hospital pharmacy.
The patient is naturally worried because she has cancer that has spread to another organ and this medication is essential to combat the spread of the malignant tumor.
Faced with the situation, the SESARAM communications office explained to the newspaper that it “awaits the availability” of the identified medicine “by the pharmaceutical industry as soon as possible”. And it emphasizes that “the acquisition of medicines requires an excessively bureaucratic procedural process, imposed by current legislation, which often makes it difficult to make the medicines available immediately”.
SESARAM also explains that there are “numerous disruptions in the supplier, delays in transport”, made difficult by the insularity. And it adds that “the approval of the budget for 2024 (outside the usual period) delayed some administrative procedures and made it difficult to budget for some new medications.
Regardless of this, it reveals that the “investment in the area of medicines in the RAM in the Regional Health System in 2024 already exceeds 110 million euros. An increase of more than 20 million compared to the previous year”. A value that it says includes “the investment made to date by SESARAM (60.5 million euros) plus the co-payment of medicines by the Regional Government of Madeira in community pharmacies through IASAUDE, in the order of 50 million”.
SESARAM assures that the “Oncology area is a priority”. “For example, in oncology medicines, investment grew by 256.76%.
In 2015 this amount was €6,285,046 and in 2023 it was €22,422,386. This year alone, and in this oncology area, in the first half of this year more than 12.2 million euros were invested.”