Interview with Doctor Paolo Mosconi by Romina Alessandri from the Science and Knowledge editorial staff

We read the opinion of Dr. Paolo Mosconi, homeopathic doctor on the question concerning the possibility that homeopathic remedies disappear from Italian pharmacies.

During the last conference of the COMILVA association in Rimini (28 March 2015) he focused the public’s attention on a serious problem: the obligation to register homeopathic drugs which could lead to the disappearance of the majority of those now available. Could you explain better what is happening and what could happen?

The topic is complex and cannot be dealt with in the necessarily short span of an article, so I will list the essential points that can be further explored later and also individually by the interested reader.

At the center of the scene is the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) , a body of the Ministry of Health that deals with the control of the construction procedures and the marketing of all drugs on the national territory.

The admission of drugs to the market is subject to a registration procedure completely managed by AIFA. After all the legislative sedimentation in the field of Homeopathic Medicine with attempts to regulate it in a comprehensive way, today there is a European directive, no. 2001/83 / EC, which regulates the matter, to which Italy conformed in 2006 with an arbitrary and completely incorrect interpretation and execution by AIFA (acknowledgment of registrations throughout 1997 and annual update for drugs added in subsequent years: absurd tax increases, up to 1000% compared to the registration costs in other European countries and with other quibbles for registration that the European directive does not provide).

As far as Homeopathy is concerned, the center of the matter is that none of the AIFA officials have the slightest competence or qualification or qualification on Homeopathic Medicine and on the construction procedures of Homeopathic Remedies or functional drugs.

In reality, AIFA has erroneously applied the principles of registration of drugs and allopathic pharmaceutical companies to homeopathic remedies .

It should be tragically noted that the same chaotic situation for the management of functional medicine is found at the level of the European Medicines Agency (from the English European Medicines Agency, EMA, previously known as the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products EMEA) which is the European Union Community Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products .

It is also true that EMA sets directives which it leaves application to the respective national agencies. This state of affairs has allowed and produced great confusion in the management of controls on the production of homoeopaths and functional drugs .

In practice, the AIFA inspectors carry out inspections on procedures they do not know and the officials deliberate rules on activities that are equally unknown to them.

In this way it turned out that the registration costs (real taxes) for homeopaths and functional drugs have been equalized to those of allopathic patients, and in an absolutely disproportionate reason compared to those of all other European states (as noted above).

The registration costs claimed by AIFA have risen unreasonably to the point of being impossible for the companies producing Omeopatic i Remedies to face, which will be forced to cease the distribution of the remedies in Italy upon the entry into force of the law promoted by AIFA, if this is ratified by the Ministry of Health and approved by Parliament. The deadline is the end of 2015.

In practice, all Italian companies have already stopped the production and distribution of most (up to 70%) of Homeopathic Remedies (with serious economic damage that has put them in serious suffering, forcing many to close).

Foreign companies with production units in Italy have closed their factories with consequent layoffs estimated at 1500 work units (1500 families).

A very hard blow to a sector, the homeopathic one, which has always been in constant positive growth and now unexpectedly led to a very serious crisis, up to the threat of closure even for the most solid companies.

It is reasonable to assume that this incomprehensible maneuver has a direction and is aimed at damaging Italian homeopathy in an irreparable way.