Incentives for pharmaceutical companies: Lauterbach wants to take action against resistant bacteria

Incentives for pharmaceutical companies
Lauterbach wants to take action against resistant bacteria

Every year more than 35,000 people in the European Economic Area die from antibiotic resistance. However, pharmaceutical companies complain that research in this area is not economically worthwhile. Health Minister Lauterbach wants to create new incentives with free pricing.

In the fight against antibiotic resistance, which is increasing worldwide, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wants to reform the reimbursement of medicines. For certain newly developed antibiotics – the so-called reserve antibiotics – there should no longer be any legally prescribed price negotiations between the pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance companies, he announced according to the “Tagesspiegel”. This should allow free pricing.

“We want to guarantee the manufacturers of reserve antibiotics free pricing,” said Lauterbach at the “Europe 2023” conference of “Tagesspiegel”, “Zeit”, “Handelsblatt” and “Wirtschaftswoche” in Berlin. This should be an incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest more in research and development of antibiotics. The move comes amid lawsuits from drug companies that developing new antibiotics is no longer economically viable for them.

Reserve antibiotics are used for infections with bacteria that are resistant to the usual antibiotics – or when an effect must be ensured in the case of very serious infections. Researchers warn of an imminent “post-antibiotic age”. Some infections that used to be routinely cured with medicines discovered in the 20th century could then no longer be treated.

An international one published in The Lancet analysis, which refers to data from 2019, finds that bacterial infections were the second leading cause of death worldwide, and were associated with one in eight deaths. According to estimates by the EU health authority ECDC, more than 35,000 people die every year in the European Economic Area due to antibiotic resistance.

source site-34