More than a million Ukrainians have already used the advantages of the government program “Affordable medicines”. Over 2 months they have used UAH 67 million, or 13.5% of the total budget. “This is a positive trend, indicating that there are enough funds. The program has been voluntarily joined by 5,986 pharmacies around Ukraine. It is almost a third of all pharmacies,” said Roman Ilyk, Deputy Minister of Healthcare of Ukraine, at a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. Since the program started, about 2 million prescriptions have been written out. Medicines have already been administered according to 1.4 million prescriptions.
The largest number of pharmacies that have joined the program are in Vinnytsia, Lviv, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Kharkiv. Lutsk, Zhytomyr, Ternopil and Cherkasy show steady results. Kyiv, Kyiv region and Kherson actively involved in the program in May. Negative dynamics is observed in Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv and Luhansk.
Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Ternopil are leaders in using funds. “Outsiders are Donetsk region, Zakarpattia, Mykolaiv and Sumy. […]If some districts or cities use money inefficiently, regional municipalities can redistribute the money to a territory making most out of the project. After the budget adjustments in September, money will be transferred from the regions that do not work successfully to those areas that are better at application of funds,” emphasizes Roman Ilyk.
New reference prices for medicines will be introduced on July 1. “This means that we expect new pharmaceutical companies to participate in August,” said Roman Ilyk. Currently, there are 37 of them.
Deputy Health Minister spoke of the possibility to launch ihealth – electronic register of patients, hospitals and doctors before the year ends. “This will help solve the problem of shortage of certain medicines. […] Manufacturers having access to the registry of patients will be able to produce the required number of medicines,” adds Roman Ilyk.
