Rula Ibrahim wrote in “Al-Akhbar”: “Support for basic medicines and medicines for chronic and incurable diseases.” With this phrase, the government’s Serail meeting dedicated to discussing the subsidies issue came out yesterday. The recommendation is part of the Ministry of Health’s plan to rationalize subsidies by reducing the drug bill by 10% annually, as well as the price of subsidized drugs in dollars. On this basis, the Ministry presented a study on options to eliminate partial subsidies “to reduce the burden on central bank reserves while maintaining drug safety.”
The study prepared by the Ministry of Health distributes the value of the import bill according to the medical classification: drugs for chronic diseases 25%, cancerous diseases 21%, public health drugs 19%, incurable diseases 15%, OTC drugs (without prescription ) that can be purchased without a prescription 15%, vaccines 2% and milk 2%. It also divided the support of the Central Bank for everything related to the medical sector at the exchange rate of 1515. Medicine constitutes 79% of the value of this support, so that as of 11, 2020, it was $ 820 million. Medical supplies make up 15%, equivalent to $ 160 million. Eventually its importers have been intimidated by its disruption, and panic and monopoly have reached the point of stockpiling “heart roses” and artificial “legs” for fear of being cut off. As for the raw materials needed by the national factories and laboratories, they are limited to 4% of the support, or about $ 40 million. This amount is small, compared to what the national industry can save on money wasted on drugs imported by merchants, benefiting from the subsidy, without posing a need for the patient, so the market is flooded with drugs of the same combination as in Sometimes they reach 30 rates for one disease.
However, the plan does not focus on its general principles to increase support for the national industry to reduce this massive importation that consumes 80% of the value of the subsidy, but instead emphasizes exclusively on “incentivizing the industry by accelerating the payment of invoices. of imports and adjusting the invoices for the value of the subsidized raw materials against the price of the medicines. ” It establishes “directive negotiations for national laboratories” in an effort to “satisfy the needs of the market for the varieties in question through their local alternatives.” A similar issue is not implemented overnight, but takes a year or more, according to the head of the Parliamentary Health Commission, Asim Araji, “but it is a necessity and we have taken years to achieve it. Note that this would also contribute to providing many jobs. This requires the serious support of this industry, which will allow it to cover 41% of the market needs in the future. But encouraging it “cannot be arbitrary and unbridled, and this is part of the authority of the central laboratory, which the Lebanese state lacks.” The laboratory is a priority to monitor manufactured drugs and generic drugs that are not mentioned in the WHO list.
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