Russia wants to increase public procurements of HIV drugs

Leading Russian patient communities have once again called on the state to increase public procurements of HIV drugs – in a move to prevent the risks of a shortage of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in the second half of 2023, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

Currently the most complex situation is observed in case of atazanavir, darunavir, ritonavir and some other drugs, while some of them do not have generics. According to patients’ representatives, due to the lack of drugs, doctors are forced to change treatment regimens, by prescribing previously cancelled drugs that caused side effects.

Yulia Vereshchagina, an official representative of the Russian patent community "Patient Control," said in an interview with the Russian Vedomosti business paper, if earlier interruptions mainly occurred with expensive drugs that have no analogues on the Russian pharmaceutical market, which were taken by a small group of patients, now this line has been supplemented by relatively cheap drugs produced by Russian pharmaceutical companies - atazanavir, efavirenz, tenofovir, etc. Some of these drugs are part of the preferred therapy for patients with a newly diagnosed HIV.