JORGE MAGALHAES^*1,2, MARLEDE MENEZES¹, ZULMIRA HARTZ², NUBIA BOECHAT³, JORGE MENDONCA^3,4
*Corresponding author
1. Farmanguinhos – FIOCRUZ. Centre for Technological Innovation – NIT Far.
Professional Postgraduate Program in Management, Research and Development in Pharmaceutical Industry
2. Global Health and Tropical Medicine, GHTM, Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, IHMT,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, UNL, Lisboa, Portugal
3. Department of Synthesis in Drugs. Farmanguinhos – FIOCRUZ
4. Executive Board. Farmanguinhos/FIOCRUZ

Abstract

The present study aimed to identify the indicators of scientific and technological trends for antibiotics in the world, with a parallel in Brazil, by analysing the market. There is 100% of dependence in antibiotics’ importation. The temporal analysis occurred in an average of 20 years in official databases in Brazil. The main results are the increase in imports of antibiotics. The amoxicillin is one of the most imported one. It ranks third among the ten pharmochemical imported in recent years – 53 tons of amoxicillin valued at approximately US$ 1.6 billion. There are 171 valid medicines registries in Brazil for these 06 groups of amoxicillin. Teuto laboratory is most prominent with 23% of medicines registries. We can conclude that through almost 50 years, Brazil has lost its reasonable sovereignty in the production of antibiotics that it had in the 70’s.

BACKGROUND
In the early twentieth century, infectious diseases were the leading causes of death worldwide. The average life expectancy was low, mainly because of high infant mortality from infections. In the mid-twentieth century, the introduction of antimicrobial agents and the advance in disease prevention through immunization contributed to the decline in the incidence rate of infectious diseases. This fact set up a different panorama from that presented at the beginning of the century (4). Therefore, the discovery and innovation of antibiotics is one of the main achievements of humanity. Antibiotics significantly increase life expectancy and save millions of people from infections that were once fatal (5, 7).

By the end of the 20th century, there were worrying trends in both developed and developing countries. New infectious agents are as a legionellosis. Despite a century of efforts in prevention and successful controls, infectious diseases remain a significant problem in global public health. They cause more than 13 million deaths annually (1).

Lower respiratory infections remained the deadliest commun ...