Current issue #25, 2015

Ministry of Health under fire

The Health Ministry’s press office became very active this summer. If before the agency used to ignore whatever assaults on it, now it became a party to discussion. The most interesting thing is that it looks like criticism is coming from the highest quarters of the government. It is All-Russia People’s Front supervised by the Presidential Administration that increasingly often tells off the ministry.

[PharmVestnik # 25, 25/08/2015, p. 1, cont’d p. 2]

Crimean gambit 

Crimean pharmacies are apprehensive about Rigla’s advent 

Some media have it that the owners of pharmacies located in the Crimea fear that Protek Group and, in particular, Rigla pharmacy chain, which is a Protek company, may venture to their territory. PharmVestnik correspondent Oxana Baranova sorted out the situation. 

[PharmVestnik # 25, 25/08/2015, p. 3]

Web pharmacies to be legalized

The Ministry of Health, together with Federal Antimonopoly Service and Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare and Social Development, submitted to the Russian Government a proposal on regulating the remote drug sales market. This proposal appeared as a result of an instruction made by Vice Premier Olga Golodets.

[PharmVestnik # 25, 25/08/2015, p. 3]

Time instead of money

Ministry of Health presented draft state guarantee program for 2016

Next year, healthcare tariffs are to show an insignificant growth; however, experts believe that doctors from the “optimized” inpatient clinics will have to go beyond themselves in order to meet the time limits for examining patients stipulated in the updated standards.

[PharmVestnik # 25, 25/08/2015, p. 4]

Pain killing in rural areas

Patient coverage with narcotic analgesics relaxed

More than a year has passed since Admiral Vyacheslav Apanasenko’s suicide – a high profile case resulting from failure to prescribe a pain killer in time. Admiral Apanasenko was the first widely known but far from the only victim of the inefficient system of cancer patients coverage with narcotic drug. According to different sources, the number of suicides numbers in dozens. The government order ...