The Russian government will cut allocations under the Ministry of Health’s program “14 high-cost nosologies”, citing an explanatory note to the draft federal budget for 2021. As part of this program, the Ministry of Health centrally purchases expensive drugs for rare diseases.
The federal program “14 high-cost nosologies” has existed since 2008. As part of this program, the Ministry of Health collects applications from the regions for the most expensive drugs and purchases them at the federal budget expense.
Under the program, medicines are provided to patients with hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, malignant neoplasms of lymphoid and hematopoietic tissue, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases.
From 2021 to 2023, funding for the program will be reduced by 12%. The budget for the purchase of drugs will be cut annually by an average of 6.5 billion rubles. In general, over three years, the program will be underfunded by more than 19.6 billion rubles.
“Organizations have long advocated an increase in the program budget, but now we are talking about reducing it. But it is impossible to exclude patients from the program, so the Ministry of Health will put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to reduce the cost of medicines,” – said Alexander Saversky, president of the League of Patients’ Defenders.
