Let's hit the health of the population with import substitution!
Will Russians survive on domestic medicines?
Natalia Gergert, BC55
Nikolay Gerasimenko, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma for Health Protection, said that by 2018 Russia will produce 90% of vital medicines (now this figure is 65%) – in order not to depend on the Western market. The remaining 10%, according to the head of the Ministry of Health Veronika Skvortsova, can take drugs from Belarus. Doctors and patients were alarmed by this promise.
The fact that fashionable Western boutiques are leaving Russia's trading platforms due to "political uncertainty" is one thing. But the fact that the shelves of pharmacies can be occupied mainly by domestic and Belarusian medicines by 2018 is something completely different. Beautiful clothes and health are completely different things. And if legislators and officials really intend to replace foreign medicines with domestic ones in such a short (three-year) period, the consequences may be unpredictable.
– If the appearance of new domestic drugs will occur in the form of free competition, and not "twisting hands", it will not be worse, – says the chief physician of the Omsk Central Clinical Hospital, associate professor Nikolay Nikolaev. – After all, budget polyclinics and hospitals are already giving priority to domestic drugs. The main problem: many of them lose to imported ones in terms of quality. It's like with cars: it's all about the details. And these details are not only the level of synthesis of the chemical purity of the drug, but also the characteristics of the carrier of the active substance of the drug. A modern tablet is often a very complex therapeutic system that allows the drug to be released evenly for, for example, 24 hours. Such a tablet surpasses many computers in the accumulation of high technologies. Most of the components of its system are protected by separate patents and, since they themselves are not medicines, no one is going to disclose them and will not. This, for example, is what distinguishes the original imported trimetazidine (preductal MV) or indapamide (arifon retard) from analogues.
At the same time, we have excellent domestic drugs that fully correspond to analogues (for example, betahistine, drotaverine, piracetam), but there are also those that I, as a specialist, will not use (I am not satisfied with the quality of Russian lisinopril, amlodipine, trimetazidine and many others).
Now about the time of the appearance of new drugs. The high-tech products that we do not produce will not be able to be produced in the coming years (these are the majority of modern antibiotics, antifungal and antitumor agents, monoclonal antibodies, genetically engineered drugs). Yes, it will take us decades to develop the necessary technologies! So if you promise it, then it's just cheating. And there is nothing to replace these drugs with – I think, as they were purchased abroad, they will continue to be purchased. The drug market is very competitive, and no imported manufacturer will voluntarily leave it. And if reliable Russian or Belarusian analogues do appear, this can only be welcomed.
Sergey Popov, the owner of two Omsk clinics, agrees with his colleague:
– Comparing other domestic tablets with branded imported ones is the same as comparing Russian and Japanese–made televisions. There is, for example, a domestic drug atorvastatin, which is desirable after 55 years to take for the prevention of heart attacks and strokes. And there is its analogue liprimar (produced in Germany, Ireland, USA). The first side effects (of which there are 35 in the instructions) are often manifested, the second is extremely rare. Therefore, according to the overall effect on the body, drugs differ like heaven and earth. Many effective anticancer drugs of foreign production. And then the question immediately arises: when will the new Russian medicines have time to pass clinical trials? To bring the drug to the market, it takes at least seven years (and from 2015 to 2018 - there are only three years left). In the Belarusian market last year, domestic medicines worth about $ 92 million were sold, or 20.4 percent of the capacity of the entire market of medicines. The rest, as far as I know, Belarusian citizens spent on the purchase of imported drugs.
...When in 2013 there was no imported antitumor drug leukeran in Russian pharmacies for several months (the license was not renewed), there was nothing to replace it with. Doctors developed treatment regimens with other drugs, but the patients got worse, not all of them survived. I would really like to see a similar situation – only on a much larger scale – not repeated…
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru10.12.2014