Cuba to continue subsidizing 46 % of medications sold in pharmacies

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 30 (ACN) Cuba will maintain the subsidy of 46 % of the medicines sold in pharmacies, 162 out of the 353 that are provided by this way, and will keep its current price after the beginning of the monetary order process.

Emilio Delgado Iznaga, director of Medicines and Medical Technologies of the Ministry of Public Health, informed on Tuesday that the country has a basic table of 619 medicines and in 2021 they are going to maintain this same amount, which covers all the pharmacological groups and the main diseases of the Cuban population - 47 % is assigned to pharmacy network.

Delgado Iznaga, when speaking at the radio and television program Mesa Redonda, affirmed that the Ordering Task took into account the extended table of 2019 of 757 drugs, which represents a cost of more than 400 million dollars.
Not all medications could increase in price because they respond to treatments of chronic diseases, that is, they must be used for life, he stressed.

For that reason, the executive clarified, they are divided into three groups, and in the first one - they are delivered by control cards in the pharmacy network and respond to treatments of chronic diseases - 85 are included (23 are imported and 22 million dollars are allocated to have them available).

In group two, there are medicines to complement the controlled ones (77), they are prescribed for long periods of time to patients with neurological and psychiatric diseases, HIV, and cancer in its terminal stage, and their prices are not modified either.

Antiretroviral drugs are used by 25,000 patients, more than three million are purchased and delivered free of charge to patients, the expert added.

In the third group, Delgado Iznaga continued, are those that are neither controlled nor complementary, which correspond to the 191 remaining lines of the basic table and respond to acute processes, which are used in short periods of time as is the case of antibiotics, antiparasitic and analgesics, and their costs are going to be modified.

He reminded that mainly in the second semester of 2020 there was an impact of COVID-19 in the coverage of medicines, besides it was necessary to assign resources for its confrontation and that was felt in the rest of the medicines.

The specialist asserted that there is a follow up to the shortages and the low coverage and January 2021 will be a better moment compared to the last six months.

On his part, Marino Murillo Jorge, member of the Politburo of the Party and head of the Commission for the Implementation of the Guidelines, said at La Mesa Redonda TV program that even with the increase in salaries, someone has difficulties in accessing medicines, the Cuban state is in a position to help them by providing social assistance, although the treatment is short.