Until the last tablet

Medicines end in hospitals

Medical anxiety. Charity organizations and doctors live in anticipation of a drug crisis - medicines are ending in hospitals. Children's clinics are not enough even a solution of glucose, adults - banal analgesics. The situation understood The New Times
“Tomorrow I fly to Rostov-on-Don. There are two children with leukemia. They need antifungal drugs, but they are not in the hospital, ”says Ekaterina Chistyakova from the Donor -Children charity foundation. Chistyakova is sorting out the applications that have come to her over the past year and a half. “The most interesting thing is that not any exotic drugs are needed. At the regional blood transfusion station, ordinary tubes are not enough and in the Morozov hospital - too. The Solntsevo NPC asks Monitol (drug for the treatment of cancer), antibiotics end in the Botkin hospital. There are applications from Yekaterinburg and Orenburg - you don’t know who to help. ” In the first two weeks of December alone, the fund spent 15 million rubles to the aid of hospitals.

Financial swamp
Ekaterina Chistyakova already closed the alarm in November. “The New Year is nearing, the 2009 budget ends, the budget of 2010 is not known when it begins, the shelves of pharmacies are empty in hospitals. Our hospitals are already hungry with a teeth, ”she wrote on her blog. - In the RDKB (Russian Children's Clinical Hospital) and the Morozov hospital we buy sets for separators of blood cells with a margin until the end of January, so that there is something to take platelets from donors. For the NPC, medical care to children with defects in the development of the face and skull we buy solutions (glucose, sodium chloride, sterofundin). Everyone is asking for antibiotics, cytostatics, catheters, plasters. ”

A little earlier, in early November, alarming signals began to come from Yekaterinburg and the Arkhangelsk region. The deputy of the Arkhangelsk Regional Assembly Galina Zhuravleva admitted that the problem exists, but one should not worry: such as in the 90s when patients came to hospitals with their sheets and droppers. ” “This is an annual vicious circle,” concludes Chistyakova. - Officials say there are no applications for additional delivery, and these applications are not sent to hospitals. They are afraid that they will be accused of that they could not correctly distribute the funds. ”

“We have everything in a relative order so far, but colleagues from the Odintsovo City Hospital said that they have big problems,” said The New Times on the basis of anonymity, the head physician of one of the clinics near Moscow. - Now they are already consuming the remains. There are no antispasmodics, analgesics. " You will have to wait for supplies until the end of the New Year holidays, during which time the situation may deteriorate sharply: “January is a financial swamp. There are no officials, suppliers do not work and that with money is completely incomprehensible. And there are many patients at this time. ” Only a few seriously ill children can benefit from this confusion. According to The New Times in the Life Line charity fund, at the end of the year, quotas are often “thrown out” to expensive operations.

The Ministry of Health under anesthesia
“Purchases occur twice a year-in May-June and November-December. After each purchase, difficulties arise: some hospitals buy something, but the majority have no such opportunity, ”said the New Times, David Melik-Guseynov, director of marketing research by the Farmexpert CMI. In April 2009, the governor of St. Petersburg Valentina Matvienko appealed at the insistence of St. Petersburg anesthesiologists to the Ministry of Health and Social Development: the city did not have enough drugs for anesthesia and resuscitation of severe patients-adrenaline, norepinephrine, dopamine, Ephedrine, and Dobutamin. Serious operations were done under local anesthesia. Former Deputy Minister of Health Ruslan Halfin then stated that the doctors were condensing paints, and the scandal was healed. The authorities deny the lack of drugs now. On December 9, in the Council of the Federation, the head of the Ministry of Health Tatyana Golikova reported that all allocated funds from the budget for 2009 were not even fully spent. “On the eve of the New Year holidays, unreasonable statements regularly appear that there may be a shortage of medical facilities in medical institutions,” the New Times said in the department. - Today, blood preparations (thrombocultate, erythromass, plasma, albumin), infusion solutions (saline, Ringer's solution) are used daily, and there is no lack. On the contrary, there is a reserve. The supply of sick children with solutions and blood components will be uninterrupted and in full. ”

Devaluation for patients
“The budget for 2009 was not reviewed, and the prices for medicines due to the devaluation of the ruble have grown strongly,” says David Melik-Guseynov. According to him, the most difficult situation in the regions: “If in Moscow the procurement process is at least somehow controlled, then in remote areas they are corny poorly considered. For example, they buy imported analogues instead of Russian, and they are more expensive. According to my data, only this could save up to 33 billion rubles a year on this. ” The procurement scheme looks like this: once every six months, money is allocated to hospitals, and they conclude contracts with suppliers. However, Anton Nosik, the founder of the Charity Foundation “Help.org”, describes a different scheme: “Back in 1988, when I worked in a village hospital, I went to Moscow, bought medicines in a pharmacy and drove to myself, to the Vladimir region. Since then, nothing has changed. You can connect everything with the onset of the New Year, but the gouging in Russia is 365 days a year. Healthcare is funded by residual principle, everyone receives defense and state propagandists. Who will make sure that the medicines do not end? Putin, or what? "

Indeed, unlike Western countries, Russia spends much more on defense than healthcare, in 2009 - five times. For example, the United States has the opposite ratio: there are 1.6 times more on medicine than on the army, and in the UK almost almost three and a half times. All the experts from charitable organizations surveyed by The New Times say that the only solution to the drug is to increase financing and proper control over the expenditure of funds, but, according to the source in the government, "in the coming years it is not necessary to expect this."