CAIRO (dpa) – Pharmaceutical giant Roche will no longer supply debt-ridden Portuguese hospitals on credit, the Lusa news agency reported Monday, citing a document from the Swiss company. However, the decision should not affect the treatment of patients, the Portuguese Health Ministry said. Roche said Portuguese hospitals owed it more than 135 million euros (181 million dollars). Some hospitals had not paid for deliveries for more than 1,000 days, while the deadline was 60 days. Roche had, therefore, interrupted sales on credit to 23 public hospitals, the company said in a statement. The Portuguese National Health Service would find “alternative solutions,” possibly with other companies, the ministry said in a press release. It criticized Roche's decision, pointing out that the company had earned hundreds of millions of euros from its sales to the Portuguese public health system. It was “reprehensible” for the company to cut credit at a time when Portugal was highly indebted and making “a historic effort to overcome the financial crisis,” the ministry said. The government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho is struggling to reduce the country's budget deficit in agreement with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which have granted Lisbon a bailout worth 78 billion euros. Some of the spending cuts have affected the health sector. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/lo1oz Tags: Crisis, debt, Europe Section: Business, Europe, Health
