Viagra offers hope, but Germans to pay for potency
BERLIN, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Millions of German men could find their sex lives
revitalised after the best-selling impotence drug Viagra made its debut across
the country on Thursday, but it will be at a price.
Viagra, produced by U.S. drugs company Pfizer <PFE.N>, will cost between
18 and 26 marks ($11 and $16) a tablet and the company's German branch
said it expected sales of around one billion marks for the year.
Hartmut Porst, a Hamburg urologist, said there were some four million men in
Germany, a country of 80 million, suffering from serious impotence problems.
The Federal Committee of Doctors and Health Funds ruled in August that for
financial reasons patients would have to pay for Viagra themselves.
As in France, Italy and Denmark, the German government agreed the drug --
approved for use in the European Union last month -- should not be available
on prescription, except when a patient was known to be suffering from a
specific illness.
Porst said it was incomprehensible not to classify impotency as an illness.
Many of his patients had said they intended to complain about the ruling forcing
them to pay for treatment, he added.
But private medical plans in Germany have said they are considering
reimbursing their members in cases of medical necessity.
In the United States where the drug was first launched around 35 million tablets
had been sold since April, said head of Pfizer's German unit Werner Soukup.
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