Russian doctors call on government to ensure supplies of original drugs to domestic market

Leading Russian doctors along with representatives of local medical communities have called on Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to ensure the supplies of original drugs to the domestic market, particularly those used for the treatment of some serious diseases, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

According to doctors, the recent amendments to the Russian civil legislation have significantly eased access of generics to public procurements in Russia, but led to the reduction of supplies of high-quality imported drugs to domestic market. As doctors have said, taking into account that most generics are almost ten times cheaper than original drugs they are currently actively purchased by the state as part of public procurements.

Still, according to doctors, “when registering generics, only chemical equivalence is usually taken into account in Russia, while there are no studies on therapeutic identity of these drugs, as is done in other countries.”