Parents of terminally ill children asked President Putin to provide them with vital medicines

The Vera Hospice Fund, the House with a Lighthouse children's hospice, and parents of terminally ill children and children with epilepsy appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a request to provide them with vital medications in accordance with international palliative care standards.

Now, as noted in the appeal, Russia does not comply with the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the minimum set of medications for children. For example, diazepam in the form for rectal administration (microenemas) is not registered in Russia, is not produced and is not officially imported, although this is the form that allows you to quickly relieve an attack of convulsions.

As a result, parents are forced to buy drugs for the treatment of epilepsy and palliative care that are not registered in Russia abroad or via the Internet from illegal resellers at inflated prices. At the same time, they risk becoming involved in criminal cases, such as Moscow resident Ekaterina Konnova, who purchased diazepam microenemas on the Internet and was later arrested while trying to sell four pieces that were of no use to her son.

The authors of the appeal also criticized the statement of the Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova that in Russia only seven children need rectal diazepam and other antiepileptic drugs. According to hospices’ own data, at least 23 thousand children need these drugs.

Doctors in public hospitals are afraid to include unregistered drugs in written reports and give only oral recommendations - for this reason, individual purchases on the basis of a consultation are also impossible.

Parents and charitable organizations are asking the president to create a means-testing system and introduce a mechanism for quickly providing children in Russia with vital drugs or their pediatric forms in accordance with WHO recommendations and international standards for the treatment of epilepsy and palliative care. The President will also be sent data from an independent registry of patients in need of drugs that are not registered in Russia.

“Such Cases” previously asked lawyers and representatives of the “House with a Lighthouse” hospice to explain whether there was a crime in the act of Ekaterina Konnova, who resold medicines, and why the precedent could lead to a wave of criminal cases.