Drug sales in Russia fall for first time in four years

Sales of drugs in Russian pharmacies during the period of January-September 2019 fell by 1.5% in volume terms to 3.8 billion packages, marking the first sales’ decline in the Russian pharmaceutical retail since 2015, according to recent statistics, published by the Russian Ministry of Health and various local analyst agencies, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

According to the DSM Group, one of Russia’s leading analytics agencies in the field of pharmaceuticals, one of reasons for this is good prevention measures, conducted by Russian veterinary and sanitary authorities, which prevented the outbreaks of flu and SARS in the country this year. In addition, another reason was the decline of purchasing power of local population.

For the entire 2019, the Ministry of Health and the DSM Group expect the market will decline by 1%.