The situation with the shortage of medicines on the market of Bosnia and Herzegovina changes from day to day, and currently there is no adequate substitute for children’s syrup Ospen 750, an antibiotic from the penicillin group, while some of the 25 medicines that were in short supply, as announced by the Medicines Agency BiH, appeared on the market.
“In the last few days, certain quantities of medicines that were defective until now have arrived, and also defects of some medicines that we had are appearing,” said Marin Crnogorac, president of the Chamber of Masters of Pharmacy of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He adds that the problem is not only in the lack of antibiotics, but shortages also occur in other groups of drugs.
However, he notes, most of these drugs have an adequate replacement, i.e. it is a generically identical drug with a different factory name, so for now there are no major problems in the supply of drugs to our patients.
“Currently, we do not have an adequate replacement for children’s syrup Ospen 750, which seems to me to be a bigger problem at the moment,” said Crnogorac.
When asked what we can expect by the end of the year, i.e. what problems could everyone face when supplying medicines, the Montenegrin says that it can only be guessed and reminds that the European Commission made a decision to ban the export of 250 molecules of medicines from the EU.
“We cannot predict what consequences this will have for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our problem is that 800 days pass from the time when a certain medicine is registered in the EU to its registration in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the last five years, not a single innovative medicine has entered the market in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is more there are reasons for that, and one of them is that in order for the drug to be on the essential list, 13 tenders need to be passed in BiH”, says the president of the Chamber of Masters of Pharmacy of the Federation of BiH.
All cantons in the Federation of BiH have their essential list and it differs from canton to canton. Also, Republika Srpska has its own list of medicines, as does Brčko District.
“As a consequence of all these problems, large foreign pharmaceutical companies are showing less and less interest in the BiH market,” Crnogorac said.
He believes that it is good that domestic producers can meet the majority of the population’s needs with medicines in BiH, somewhere around 70 percent.
