Single market for medicines

The EU’s proposed single market for medicines (April 28) sounds good – let’s hope its anticipated advantages will manage to trickle down to Malta.

We’ve had, for a long time, at least two major problems with provision of medicines to patients. Number one is the atrociously higher cost (twice to three times) of some medicines here compared with other major countries – the extra cost of freight for Malta cannot justify such a huge difference in pricing. This problem has been raised in these columns a number of times and nothing substantial has been done about it by both this and the previous administration.

Photo: Shutterstock.com

The second problem we’ve had is anxious patients with serious diseases being prescribed a newish expensive drug which is not supplied for free by our health service (but is offered by other European health systems) and who have to go to the president’s Community Chest Fund asking for charity (and undergo a means-test for eligibility to this charity). 

The proposed EU medicines single market sorely needs to solve this affordability problem as the next few years are expected to gradually introduce a claimed revolution in cancer vaccines based on messenger RNA technology. These could render obsolete the notion that cancer caught late is often incurable. We have been waiting for several decades of cancer science for such a therapeutic revolution.  

One hopes the current hype won’t disappoint us. What is certain is that this novel cancer vaccine therapy won’t be cheap. It will be the welfare state’s responsibility that it won’t be only available to the rich.

Albert Cilia-Vincenti – Attard

Malta’s neutrality

Ranier Fsadni’s article on Malta’s neutrality (‘Neutrality and unreality’, April 27) was spot-on, as most of his articles are. I would like to add to Fsadni’s analysis.

When Malta proposed its neutrality formula way back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Italian academics tried to theorise its underpinnings. Their conclusion was that Maltese neutrality was sui generis.

Recently, the Italian geopolitical review Limes carried an article suggesting the Italian state should look at Malta’s neutrality as a model to follow.

The implied criticism in Fsadni’s article reminded me of a quotation from the Russian thinker Vernadsky,  quoted by Ġużeppi Schembri (Bonaci) in his 1990 book on the common heritage of mankind. Unfortunately, I can’t find my copy of this book so I have to quote from memory. Vernadsky, points out Schembri, says that a people that simply imports ideas is culturally dead.

It’s almost too obvious to be taken seriously. And, yet, sometimes we need somebody to point out what is obvious for it to become obvious.

Anyway, Schembri cited that line from Vernadsky in relation to an original “Maltese” idea: the concept of “Common Heritage of Mankind”. The same approach can be applied to Malta’s neutrality model. Scholars and others who seek to conceptualise it in terms of models followed by other nations will fail in their endeavours and, therefore, will fail when trying to explain it.

On the other hand, if it is accepted that – as the Italians have pointed out – our neutrality is sui generis, then it can be properly articulated.

In sum, the Maltese need to be creative not just derivative, not perennial importers but, at times, creators. In the case of neutrality, it seems that Maltese ingenuity created something new and the Italians – the masters of ingenuity – recognised it, while we, who are used passively to “ape our betters” (as Lord Byron put it two centuries ago), didn’t.

Whether or not you agree with Malta-style neutrality is another story. But before you agree or disagree, as Fsadni said, you need to articulate.

Mark Sammut Sassi – Żebbuġ