Ministry of Health selects the United Nations and Crown Agents Ltd. as partners for public procurement

Kyiv, August 5, 2015. Ukraine’s Ministry of Health has selected two organizations to carry out public procurement through international mechanisms starting in 2015. The UN – through the UNDP, WHO and UNICEF – has been chosen as one of the two organizations. It has been supplying medicine and vaccines to Ukraine for many years, and has also provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Health to improve future procurements. Crown Agents Ltd., the second company selected, is an international development agency from the U.K. with extensive experience in public sector procurement of a wide range of medical supplies worldwide.

“The main criteria for selecting partners for the Health Ministry was not only the possibility of a separate international organization to administer purchases this year, but also providing technical assistance to the ministry to develop new rules on procurement in the future and the prospects of long-term cooperation,” said the Minister of Health Alexander Kvitashvili.

According to the plan, in 2015, international organizations will carry out procurement on seven national programs: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, immunization, pediatric and adult oncology (which count as two separate programs), viral hepatitis and diseases included under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“The choice of national programs that we plan to transfer to international organizations is based on several principles: These programs cover the needs of the most disadvantaged sections of the population and are socially significant. Also, some of these programs were previously at risk of disruption during national procurement, and we will do everything to avoid this in future. As to the volume of purchases, these programs take about 30 percent of the total budget allocated for procurement of medicine in 2015,” said Deputy Minister of Health Ihor Perehinets.

Cooperation with international organizations on procurement is actively developing. The Health Ministry will to coordinate on technical details of negotiations and contracts for the purchase of medical drugs through international mechanisms during the upcoming weeks.