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Brazil: Supreme Court understands that it is "the duty of the State to provide medicine not registered in the Brazilian Sanitary Surveillance Agency."

  • Writer Priscilla Viana Palhano Lima
  • Date 2019-06-01
  • Views 2,948

Experimental drugs, in short, are those without scientific evidence of efficacy and safety, and still in the research and testing phase, but the Brazilian Supreme Court has reached a result regarding the issue of high-cost drugs without ANVISA registration.

 

According to them, "supply and import will never be justified" and "the State cannot be required to supply experimental medicines. […] There is no chance that the judiciary can force the state to provide them."

 

However, with regard to medicines with proven efficacy and safety, but without registration in ANVISA, the Supreme Court established the requirements for its provision by the State through a judicial decision.

 

The first requirement is "administrative default," consisting of ANVISA's unreasonable delay in considering the application for registration of the drug, that is, that the deadlines set by the law are not respected.

 

For STF the inertia of ANVISA in these specific cases would be responsible for preventing patients from having access to necessary medicines, unduly frustrating the enjoyment of their fundamental right to health and thus justifying judicial intervention.

 

The only exception to this first requirement will be the cases of drugs called "orphans", which are those marketed for rare and ultra-rare diseases, which because of lack of economic viability there is no request for registration by the pharmaceutical industry.

 

The second requirement is the absence of a therapeutic substitute registered in ANVISA for the treatment of the patient's disease. If the patient has another "satisfactory" option for the treatment of the disease with due sanitary registration, the Judiciary can not compel the Public Power to import the drug requested by the patient.

 

The third requirement is that the judicially filed drug be registered in reputable regulatory agencies outside Brazil.

 

The fourth and final requirement is the demonstration of the applicant's financial and social incapacity to pay for the purchase of the drug. This scenario may be positive for solid technology industries that have technological innovation as their basis.

 

 

SOURCE: https://tudorondonia.com/noticias/tema-500-do-stf-dever-do-estado-de-fornecer-medicamento-nao-registrado-pela-anvisa,31385.shtml