Disruption of essential medicines purchase is emergency and it hits people - Radiy Khabirov

UFA, 6 November 2018. /Bashinform News Agency, Gulfiya Akulova/ translated by Tatiana Aksyutina/.

Today, an issue of unsatisfactory supply of medicines and medical equipment was raised at a briefing session in the republican Government.

As the Interim Minister of Health of the Republic, Rafael Yapparov, noted, the functions of the state customer for the centralized provision of medicines to the beneficiaries, the purchase of equipment was entrusted to the Procurement Directorate state public institution. This year, the Directorate announced 2769 purchases, concluded state contracts worth 4 billion 532 million rubles. Of the 417 auctions announced through the Ministry of Economic Development, 348 were completed. The volume of budget allocations directed to the Procurement Directorate amounted to 6 billion 179 million rubles for 2018.

“A large number of auctions are declared void due to the submission of only one bid. The main share of such ineffective auctions accounts for the supply of medicines, which have only one manufacturer within one generic name, as well as for medical equipment,” Rafael Yapparov said. “In order to avoid reoccurrence of the drug supply situation that took place last year, two-year contracts on regional benefits were concluded. The approved amount for 2019 is 1 billion 790 million rubles. As part of providing the population with medicines according to the federal benefits in 2019, transfers in the amount of 208 million rubles are currently allocated. Auctions are arranged, the approximate deadline for the conclusion of contracts is December 17, 2018. This will be enough to provide those in need of preparations in 2019. Subventions from the federal budget are expected at the end of January 2019”.

According to the head of the ministry, there are cases of poor-quality bid preparation in terms of technical assignments, substantiating the initial maximum prices of contracts, establishing admission and limitation of foreign-made products while preparations of auctions for the medical equipment purchase. These issues resulted in a significant number of complaints to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service for RB. In 2018, 24 complaints were received, of which 11 were found to be valid.

Rafael Yapparov, named the lack of experienced specialists in the field of procurement, high staff turnover due to heavy workload, and frequent changes in the management of the Procurement Directorate as the main problems in this area. According to him, in order to address the human resources issue, the Ministry of Health initiated reorganization in the form of joining the Procurement Directorate to the republican center for quality control and certification of medicines.

“We are not talking about an earthquake, which does not depend on us, but about particular things. These are you that performed in such a way that the bidding did not take place by the end of the year, and the medications were not procured”, Radiy Khabirov appealed to the leadership of the Procurement Directorate. “You must understand that your failures, the invalidity of auctions are an emergency, and it hits people”.

The Acting Head of Bashkortostan charged the responsible parties to report on this issue to the Government every two months.