Medicines against fever and pain and children’s antibiotic syrups, which were missing from the Czech market last year, according to the director of the State Institute for Drug Control (SÚKL), Tomáš Boráná, will be sufficient this season.
He said this at a press conference on his half-year tenure at the head of the institute. Some people will also have lower co-payments for medicines in pharmacies from next year, after reaching the limit they will not pay their deductible part.
“According to our analyses, both the supplies of fever and pain medications and the special forms of antibiotics for children’s patients would be sufficient for the winter season. And we already have channels in place to secure supplies from other countries if necessary,” said Boráň.
According to the Deputy Minister of Health, Jakub Dvořáček, the fundamental reason for last year’s situation on the drug market, for example for antibiotics, was an increase of tens of percent in demand. Currently, according to him, deliveries are being delayed, which manage to cover up drugs from other manufacturers.
“It will never be possible to prevent outages, but we managed to keep the supplies so that they reached the patients,” said Boráň. According to him, it was also possible to resolve the situation surrounding the antibiotic ointment Framykoin, drugs for obesity or asthma.
According to Boráná, the amendment to the Medicines Act, which has been in effect since the beginning and some obligations since July of this year, gave the state a number of options to provide Czech patients with insufficient medicines. According to him, for example, the government agreed to the import and payment of medicinal products from abroad from the public health insurance, or it was possible to register children’s anti-fever syrup from another manufacturer very quickly. “We have a well-trodden path,” he added.
At the same time, he warned against panic, which the media may cause by misinterpreting data on the interruption of drug supplies or marking them with the flag “limited availability” on the SÚKL website. “By labeling the product in this way, it does not mean that it is not available to patients, but that we are taking steps to ensure that it is not,” added the director.
Drug manufacturers must report interruptions in their supplies to the Czech market to SÚKL, and according to Boráná, manufacturers of medical devices will also report outages in the same way from January. These range from dressing material to materials needed for laboratory tests to aids such as crutches or prostheses for amputees.
For prescription drugs covered by public health insurance, people pay co-payments at pharmacies, which consist of two parts. The health insurance company returns the so-called creditable part of the supplement after reaching the limit. The amount of the second component of the surcharge is determined by the pharmacy itself.
Newly from next year, insurance companies will not register deductible surcharges, but SÚKL. After reaching the limit, people will pay less at the pharmacy. “It doesn’t mean that patients don’t pay anything extra in the pharmacy, it only applies to deductible co-payments,” explained Boráň. According to him, people will be able to view their limit and the amount paid for deductible supplements in the mobile or web application of the e-recept system.
Source: zpravy.tiscali.cz
