German drug use saves lives, VFA data shows

The German research-based pharmaceutical industry association, VFA, has launched the Arzneimittel-Atlas, an annual drug report produced on its behalf by the Berlin-based IGES Institute. The document provides details of drug spending by the sickness benefit funds (Krankenkassen) and analysis of Germany's pharmaceutical market. Among the major findings, the combined vaccine and other drug expenditure by the payers was 28.0 billion euros ($41.39 billion) in 2007, 1.6 billion euros (6.4%) more than in the previous year. That figure was partly affected by the imposition of a 700.0 million euros in value-added tax increases.

The Atlas' lead author and director of the IGES, Bertram Haussler, said: "in the case of many diseases the increase of [drug] consumption is to be welcomed, since the health of patients is thereby improved. For example, the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases has halved in the past 40 years." New drugs had "substantially" contributed to this improvement, Prof Haussler noted, from 729 deaths per 100,000 for CVD in 1968 to 300 in 2007. The VFA's chief executive, Cornelia Yzer, said that the 4.5 billion euros in R&D investment by German-based companies could have been more beneficial. She said: "only the innovation-hostile cost-containment policies of the federal government" prevents the greater use of new products.