16:09 06.01.2021

Ukraine fails to contract vaccines from leading manufacturers due to concentration of procurement talks in Health Ministry – ministry

3 min read
Ukraine fails to contract vaccines from leading manufacturers due to concentration of procurement talks in Health Ministry – ministry

Ukraine was unable to contract vaccines against coronavirus (COVID-19) disease from the leading manufacturers in 2020 due to the fact that the Health Ministry focused all negotiations on the purchase of vaccines, state-owned enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine said.

"Our country has and still has all the tools and opportunities to compile a portfolio and contract vaccines from leading manufacturers back in 2020. Unfortunately, these negotiations were concentrated within the Health Ministry. Therefore, they did not have a significant result," the Health Ministry told Interfax-Ukraine.

The Health Ministry called manipulation of the minister's statement that the Health Ministry has been negotiating with vaccine manufacturers since May 2020.

"Those countries and associations that started negotiations on the purchase of vaccines in the summer, already at the end of December 2020 to early January 2021, started to vaccinate their citizens. If Ukraine starts negotiations in May, now we should have already had vaccines. In most countries, the contracting period for vaccine manufacturers is from several weeks to two months," the ministry said.

The state-owned enterprise said that as of the middle of December 2020, contracts were signed in the EU with six manufacturers for 2 billion doses of vaccines and negotiations are underway for an additional 200 million doses; in early December 2020, Poland contracted 45 million doses from three world manufacturers; Germany, Hungary and Slovakia started to vaccinate the population before the New Year.

In addition, the Health Ministry said one of the manufacturers, with whom the state-owned enterprise was negotiating on the purchase of vaccines, "warned of a possible withdrawal from the negotiations, since it had been waiting for a decision of the Health Ministry on the purchase for too long." "Negotiations have been conducted since September, the finalization of documents took place in the third decade of December, since then the manufacturer has not received any information from the Health Ministry. The key negotiating position in the procurement of vaccines is speed and clarity when concluding contracts. Unfortunately, this is definitely not what our team can influence when it comes to the actions of the Health Ministry," the ministry said.

"The Health Ministry can in the shortest period of time contract vaccines from key global manufacturers so that Ukraine has a portfolio of vaccines. And for this we need exactly less than nine months. For this we need to be able to carry out work without pressure from the Health Ministry and additional unreasonable barriers," the state-owned enterprise said.

 

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