Ukraine Launches Procurement of Medicines/Medical Devices Reform

The Cabinet of Ministers approved the reform’s Concept on August 23, 2017.

The reform shall be implemented by 2019 to bring transparency, efficiency, best international practices and fair competition into the procurements system. The Concept introduces a new approach to public procurement of medicines and medical devices through the independent centralized procurement organization, coordinated through MoH.

The organization shall take over the public procurement functions from MoH, regional governments and public healthcare institutions. The Concept defines two main stages of the reform implementation:

Setting up of the organization, creating a regulatory framework and internal policies/procedures, selection and training of the core team; conducting pilot procurement projects (2nd half of 2017);
Further development and capacity building of the organization in the areas of e-infrastructure (using a specialized electronic procurement platform), analytics, international cooperation; conducting selected regional procurement projects (2018).

When fully implemented, the centralized procurement organization will procure medicines and medical devices at the national (replacing the current temporary system of procurement through international organizations), as well as local level.

MoH is now developing a detailed implementation step plan, to be approved further by the Cabinet. The need for the reform is caused by ineffective and non-transparent centralized procurement system of MoH, as well as a decentralized system on the regional level, used in the recent decades.

Source: MarchenkoDanevych