INFARMED, Portugal’s authority controlling medication, has approved 60 “innovative” new products in the last year, the majority of them presenting strides in the treatment of various cancers.
Seven of the new meds are targeted at ‘rare diseases’, say reports, while INFARMED’s president Maria do Céu Machado has marked the organisation’s 25-year anniversary saying she expects as many as 600 new meds on the market in the next five years.
At the ceremony celebrating INFARMED’s quarter century, staff appeared dressed in black as a sign of protest to the organisation’s move from Lisbon to Porto.
Perhaps due to this ongoing ‘conflict’, health secretary Adalberto Campos Ferreira was not present to hear INFARMED’s ‘good news’.
The new meds approved over the last 12 months include treatments for lung, skin, colorectal and bone cancers, while the ‘rare diseases’ given new possibilities for control include Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Fabry’s Disease, an inherited disorder that results from the buildup of a particular kind of fat in the body’s cells.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
