Medications that have official registration in the European Union, United States, Canada, Australia and Japan will no longer require registration in Ukraine if the new government initiative is supported by the parliament, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at the Dec. 10 Cabinet meeting.
“This means that we are canceling the bureaucratic and corrupt registration of medications that have gone through registration in these countries,” Yatsenyuk told the Cabinet.
The new initiative is one of the first steps towards a comprehensive medical reform in Ukraine proposed by the new Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili. He had previously conducted a similar reform in his native Georgia. He was appointed minister last week and is expected to present his medical reform in Ukraine on Dec. 11.
Ukraine has 8,929 foreign drugs in its national registry, according to the State Register of Drugs of Ukraine. The number of home-made trademarks stands at 3,728. It’s not clear, however, how many on the foreign list come from the countries listed by Yatsenyuk.
Moreover, the prime minister said that Ukraine will outsource public procurement tenders for certain drugs and vaccines to international organizations, such as the United Nations, UNICEF, and World Health Organization. He said this will be done to remove corruption and inefficiency in public procurement.
He said a number of laws need to be changed to implement these and other changes in healthcare . Yatsenyuk says that Ukraine spends about 8 percent of gross domestic product on healthcare, which is on the par with European countries.
“But this money does not reach people,” he says. “We have to achieve efficient use of these 8 percent.”
He said the Health Ministry is preparing a law on private -public partnership in healthcare, as well as a law on medical insurance.
