site.btaParliamentary Commitee Discusses Shortage of Insulin, Other Medicines

National Assembly Health Committee Chair Kostadin Angelov Thursday said that "on the face of it, it seems that there is no problem with insulin, but all those people complaining implies that there is a problem". The Committee met to hear representatives of several institutions on the shortage of insulin and other medicines in Bulgaria and the functioning of the Specialized Electronic System for the Tracking and Analysis of Medicinal Products Included in the Positive Drug List (SESPA).

The meeting was to be held behind closed doors but reporters were allowed to attend when it opened. Taking part were Health Minister Hristo Hinkov, General Directorate Combating Organized Crime Director Yavor Serafimov, State Agency for National Security Chair Plamen Tonchev, Bulgarian Drug Agency Executive Director Bogdan Kirilov, and officials of the National Revenue Agency, the National Customs Agency, Information Services JSC, among others.

"We will certainly retrieve data from the National Health Insurance Fund showing that every single person who needed insulin has received it. The point is how this has happened and whether it was on time,” Angelov said. He added that all media reports had shown that insulin is not available in pharmacies.

Angelov noted that "whether medicines are held back in warehouses, are not delivered to pharmacies on time, or get delivered to pharmacies with which the warehouses are vertically integrated and the pharmacies are returning the medicines with different types of credit advices: all this should be scrutinized and controlled. If we can't deal with that, it means that the holders of marketing authorizations are more powerful than the State, than all institutions," he said, raising the issue of whether SESPA is functioning adequately.