Russian government plans on innovative drugs and centralized mechanism for their purchase

Print 27 February 2018
Ремедиум

The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) has announced its plans to submit a proposal to the national government to speed up state registration of innovative drugs and to create a centralized mechanism for their purchase in the country, according to an official spokesman of head of FAS Sergey Artemyev, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

At present state procurement of drugs is the second largest (after construction) cost item for state customers. According to the Ministry of Economics, in 2016, the value of this segment reached 550 billion roubles ($9.48 billion).

Most of the purchases are carried out by regional health ministries and health facilities. The fragmentation of the segment of public purchases of drugs was one of the goals of a new public procurement system, which was established in Russia in 2014, with the aim of stimulating competition in the state segment of the Russian pharmaceutical market and reduce prices for drugs sold within it.

At present, the government carries out centralized purchases of drugs within the structure of only “7 nosologies" program, which is a public procurement program, which involves purchases of the most expensive drugs against rare, serious illnesses.

In most cases, drugs for the treatment of rare (orphan) diseases are under patent protection and have a single seller and a high cost.

Mixed reception

In the meantime, leading Russian drugmakers and pharmaceutical experts business have different positions, regarding with the latest state proposals.

According to Ivan Glushkov, general director of Stada CIS, a German –owned firm, this will save costs and time for conducting auctions for patented drugs with a single supplier.

Regarding the acceleration of state registration of drugs, according to local experts, such state initiatives are discussed annually, but so far, pharmaceutical companies are still forced to conduct separate clinical trials in Russia, which increases the time of the launch of a drug to the market for up to two years.

This is also due to a lack of a system of mutual recognition of the results of clinical studies between Russia and the majority of Western countries.

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