Drugs: “The fever juice shows how the system fails” – economy

How can it be that in an industrialized country like Germany, a drug is missing for months? Pro-generics boss Andreas Burkhardt explains why it is, what needs to be done – and why things are going on at Ratiopharm like in the kitchen.

Interviewed by

Elizabeth Dostert

Andreas Burkhardt, 46, has been CEO of Pro Generika since the beginning of the year, he comes in the middle of a crisis. The association represents the manufacturers of medicines for which patent protection no longer exists. According to Pro Generika, 80 percent of the prescriptions at the expense of the statutory health insurance companies relate to such mostly cheaper imitation products, but they only account for a good seven percent of the expenditure on pharmaceuticals. Burkhardt is also the managing director for Germany and Austria of the Israeli group Teva, one of the largest generic drug manufacturers in the world, to which the German company Ratiopharm has belonged since 2010. Fever juices for children have made a lot of headlines in recent months – Ratiopharm is the largest supplier of juices with the active ingredient paracetamol.

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