The state-owned enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine saved UAH 1.01 billion, or about 24% of the expected cost, during the procurement of drugs for the 2020 state budget, according to the analysts of the Patients of Ukraine charitable foundation.

The foundation said that in the first procurement year, the Medical Procurement of Ukraine took over 14 procurement programs, the budget of which amounted to UAH 6.1 billion, another 24 programs were transferred to international organizations. The total procurement budget was UAH 10 billion.

The enterprise was supposed to purchase 483 medicines for the funds of the 2020 budget, contracts were concluded for 375 items.

The Patients of Ukraine said that 61% of drugs were purchased by the enterprise directly from manufacturers, the rest of drugs were purchased through distributors.

Most of the purchased medicines are of foreign manufacturing (226 items). Only 20 items of Ukrainian manufacturing were purchased.

The largest suppliers of drugs were the Swiss companies Baxalta GmbH (ten contracts totaling UAH 592 million), Organon Central East GmbH (nine contracts for UAH 328 million), Octapharma AG (18 contracts for UAH 224 million), and Novo Nordisk Ukraine LLC (nine contracts for UAH 203.9 million) and Liudmyla-Pharm LLC (38 contracts for UAH 199 million).

At the same time, the patient organization said that procurement of 108 items in the amount of UAH 860 million did not take place due to the delay in the approval of the necessary documents by the Health Ministry.

"The Health Ministry delayed the start of procurements. In fact, procurements started in June 2020, while in previous years, procurements started in March-April. That is, the Medical Procurement of Ukraine had only seven months to organize procurement processes. If the state-owned enterprise had the opportunity to start procurements at least a month earlier, they would have been in time," Executive Director at Charitable Fund Patients of Ukraine Inna Ivanenko said.