Domestic pharmaceutical production increases to 124 billion tenge in Kazakhstan, DKnews.kz reports.
Minister of Healthcare Akmaral Alnazarova at the Government session chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov reported on measures taken to provide medicines to the population.
UKIMET
She reported that in general for drug provision at the outpatient and inpatient levels, the cost of the national budget is 474 billion tenge, and the cost of the local budget 26.7 billion tenge. Drug provision at the outpatient level covers 3.5 million patients for the amount of 251 billion tenge in 120 nosologies. To ensure accessibility of medicines and medical devices for rural residents, 172 pharmacy points on the basis of medical organisations and 694 private pharmacies, as well as 15 mobile pharmacy points have been organised.
"Drug supply to patients at the inpatient level is carried out by centralised and independent procurement in accordance with the Kazakhstan National Drug Formulary. This year, the procurement campaign by a single distributor for 2025 began two months earlier, which will ensure the delivery of medicines to the warehouses of LLP ‘SK-Pharmacy’ until 1 January 2025" Akmaral Alnazarova
The Minister said that in 2024 the volume of production of domestic pharmaceutical products increased to 124 billion tenge, an increase of 18%.
"For 2024 under long-term contracts, the delivery of 702 items of pharmaceutical products was carried out. In 2025, it is expected to increase production to 1728 items" Akmaral Alnazarova
The Minister added that as part of the continuation of work on import substitution from 2025 will be expanded the list of domestic drugs with the support of existing domestic manufacturers, intensified cooperation with global international pharmaceutical companies, as well as revised conditions for long-term contracts with the introduction offtake contracts.
Akmaral Alnazarova also noted that the main objectives of the Ministry of Healthcare to provide the population with medicines include: access to safe and quality medicines, efficiency and transparency of the procurement system, digitalisation of the processes of circulation of medicines and medical devices, development of the pharmaceutical industry.
Currently, 6,891 medicines and more than 13,000 medical devices are registered in the country. There are three laboratories for testing medicines and medical devices in the country. These laboratories conduct expert examinations of medicines for quality, safety and efficiency. Since the beginning of the year, 145 names of medicines and medical devices or 2.6 per cent of the submitted applications have been prevented from entering the market based on the results of expert examinations. From 1 July 2024, labelling and traceability of medicines in the Republic of Kazakhstan will be introduced. This will make it possible to suppress the illegal circulation of medicines. To date, more than 68 million packages of medicines have been labelled, of which 28.5 million packages have been put into circulation.
