Good news from Italy! Around 473,000 people living in difficult or destitute conditions will receive treatment thanks to the drugs collected during this week-long charity event promoted by Banco Farmaceutico, a non-profit organisation that has been battling against health poverty in Italy for 20 years.
IBSA Italia, the largest branch in the Group, actively took part in this initiative, known as Drug Collection Day (Giornata di Raccolta del Farmaco) or #GRF20. This year, to celebrate 20 years since the event was launched, it lasted for a full seven days. 22,000 collection volunteers and around 17,000 pharmacists took part in total. Together, thanks to the contribution of thousands of Italian citizens, they were able to collect more than 541,000 packs of over-the-counter medicines in a total of 4,944 pharmacies.
Unfortunately, health poverty in Italy still remains a very serious problem. Despite the great work of Banco Farmaceutico and the efforts of all those who took part in the largest and most widespread health charity event ever to take place in Italy, just under 50% of the medicines at no cost to patients required to solve the problem of health poverty were collected.
In fact, it is estimated that in Italy, for 2020, there is a need for 1,096,479 packs of medicines (compared to 1,040,329 packs in 2019). Drugs collected in the #GRF20 week will help meet over 49% of the need (compared to 40.5% in 2019).
The Group supports IBSA Italia in their strong commitment to fight against health poverty. Supporting people and improving quality of life for all is at the heart of the company's mission. Since 2013, the Italian branch of the IBSA Group has donated around 247 million drug packs and supported the annual drafting of the health poverty Report in Italy.