- The availability of innovative medicines, which patients receive free of charge, is increasing, along with full qualification for these therapies and complete monitoring of the patient during them, Deputy Health Minister Maciej Miłkowski said during Thursday's meeting of the Parliamentary Health Committee, dedicated to the topic of the country's drug security. Maciej Miłkowski also addressed the issue of shortages of particular drugs on the market and the question of domestic production.
Maciej Miłkowkski: The economic availability of medicines has definitely been improving over the last few years
Published July 28, 2023 09:59
In his speech, the deputy health minister noted that for several years more therapies have been successively made available through drug lines.
- We issue new reimbursement decisions every two months to increase this availability. In recent years, we have often changed the content of drug programs to be in line with European guidelines and the characteristics of the medicinal product. We also often expand these reimbursement indications, in accordance with current medical knowledge and not necessarily with the SmPC. This is particularly evident when we transfer drug availability to the chemotherapy catalog. Such expansion occurs ex officio, after evaluation by the Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tarification and experts: national consultants and scientific societies," Maciej Miłkowski pointed out.
On the other hand, the availability of drugs in pharmacy reimbursement is expanding to a slightly lesser extent. According to the health ministry, this is because manufacturers submit relatively few reimbursement applications.
- This prompted us to work on the reimbursement law, as a result of which the problem of lack of applications will be taken over by the Minister of Health. Within the framework of its running costs, AOTMiT will analyze the legitimacy of introducing more therapies that are already generalized and at the same time very firmly established in therapeutic practice," announced Maciej Miłkowski.
Economic accessibility is also to be improved by a law that will make free drugs available to those aged 65 and over and under 18.
However, the country's drug security is also influenced in no small measure by the certainty of the supply of medicines when patients need them.
- Some drugs are in short supply, and the reasons for this are very different. These can be problems with product contamination, changes in production technology, as well as technological problems with specific batches or problems with the availability of particular materials, including packaging, the deputy minister admitted.
The ministry's response to these difficulties is to be a statutory change that will make it necessary to make storage slopes in the country available for a minimum of three months.
- We see that this is mostly already being implemented, but we plan to introduce it in a formalized way from the middle of next year," Miłkowski announced.
Domestic production is very important in the opinion of those in power. As the deputy health minister pointed out, there are several large domestic entrepreneurs in Poland, but European corporations also have their factories. Production there takes place both for domestic supplies and for export.
Meanwhile, as MP Marek Rutka of the Democratic Left Alliance pointed out, only 30 percent of drugs available in pharmacies come from domestic production. In his opinion, this is far too little.
- It would be naive to think that Poland can produce 100 percent of medicines. However, if we were to reverse the hierarchy and 70 percent of production was in the domestic market, we might feel more comfortable and secure than we do today, he said.
Krzysztof Kopeć, president of the National Drug Manufacturers, expressed a similar view. However, as he noted, the revised reimbursement law recognizes the importance of drug safety and increasing production in the country.
- We appreciate this, but nevertheless, in order to make it more effective, the preferences should not be for individual drugs or substances, which is what is envisaged in the draft, but for manufacturers, because they are the ones who can respond to crises and be the support of the country's drug security. We need to move to sprint towards the country's drug sovereignty," he noted.
Responding to allegations related to the low share of domestic manufacturers in the production of medicines for the Polish market, Maciej Miłkowski stressed that Poland used to be a major manufacturer on the international stage. However, during the rule of the Freedom Union and the Left, there was a sale of many domestic entities to foreign companies.
