Health care activists say Ukraine's Health Ministry is sabotaging the transfer of state drug procurement - an Hr 4 billion or $160 million a year enterprise -- to international organizations.
In
response to widespread corruption in the state purchase of drugs, Ukraine’s
Parliament adopted two laws that order the transfer of procurement to United
Nations organizations and large non-profit organizations.
Before
the bills were passed in March, Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili said in numerous TV interviews that the
new procurement process would be under way by May. However, activists say that
no progress has been made in transferring the purchasing powers.
Despite Health Ministry assurances that the state
is doing everything possible to hold transparent and fair procurement,
activists are worrried.
“There
are only two possible reasons why the Health Ministry is dragging its feet on
the drugs procurement transfer,” Vitaliy Shabunin of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a watchdog
organization, said at a press conference on April 29. “It’s either
complete incompetence of the people working in the ministry, or the desire to
save the corrupt schemes, which have been thriving there before.”
According
to Dmytro Sherembey, head of the Patients of Ukraine charity foundation, 2014
was a health-care disaster for Ukraine because of delays in drug purchases and
corruption that left hundreds of thousands of people without treatment.
“And
now, here is this threat, approaching again for all the patients,” he said at
the same conference.
Leonid
Chernyavsky, a lawyer from the Arzinger law firm that worked on the
proscurement transfer law, said that the newly adopted procedures are easier,
cheaper and more trustworthy.
“These
laws were designed to take the tender from Health Ministry, and to entrust the
procurement to those, whom Ukrainians trust – to the World Health Organization,
the United Nations Children’s Fund. They’ve got well-developed programs of
procurements and tenders,” Chernyavsky said. “As soon as Health Ministry
designs the order (for the drugs) and gives it to them, they will start the
procedure. Every decision will be made there, and corruption is eliminated.”
In
his words, the drugs bought by the international organizations will be exempted
from taxes, therefore cheaper, and there will be a chance to buy more drugs
with the released money. Also, the access to the Ukrainian market will be
easier for the drugs, bought by the international organizations.
The
Health Ministry is supposed to transfer this year the purchases of the medicine
for four programs of 18 existing: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis and
vaccines.
If
the transfer is done, the economy for these programs will be 42 percent,
providing treatment for extra 1.5 million people, activists say.
The
transfer of the procurement for all the programs should be finished in four
years.
Ihor
Perehinets, deputy health minister, says that the system has been really
corrupt and unprofessional for years, but the current officials are trying hard
to fix it.
“For
many years state have been financing from 10 to 60 percent of the need drugs,
so there has been always lack of drugs,” he says.
In
his words, this year the government has a budget of Hr 4 billion for the drug
purchases, and that will cover only 40-50 percent of needs.
Therefore,
the ministry is trying to design the list of the drugs it will order as
accurately as it can, Perehinets says. In his words, the procurement will start
in June.
“There
has never been proper planning. We are trying to change that,” he says.
Dr.
Dorit Nitzan Kaluski, the World Health Organization representative and head of
the organization’s office in Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post that Ukraine’s
ministry “is following the plan.”
“They took huge steps and now they are moving forward,” she said.
“There is a procedure, it’s not all the ministry,
it’s many layers of legal systems. For example, one of the big things (the
ministry needs to do) is that one of the funds of the Financial Ministry should
be transferred to us, it’s not so simple as it sounds, it’s simple for us, but
for Ukraine it’s not.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona
Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
