Many cancer patients have to spend billions of dong to prolong their lives for another year.

Cancer patients receiving treatment at Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital - Photo: DUYEN PHAN

On September 19, the Ho Chi Minh City National Assembly Delegation held a workshop to provide comments on the draft law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Pharmacy Law.

Mr. Le Ngoc Danh - Head of the Pharmaceutical Management Department (Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health) - said that after nearly 10 years since the Law on Pharmacy was issued (2016), through the rapid development process, many current issues will have a certain gap and therefore need to be supplemented and considered.

As before, medical oxygen was included in the list of equipment, but now according to the amended Law on Pharmacy, it has been removed from the list of equipment. Thus, medical facilities will not know how to manage it.

According to Dr. Danh, the World Health Organization (WHO) currently lists medical oxygen as an essential medicine.

Therefore, the new Pharmacy Law needs to clearly regulate medical oxygen so that medical facilities can apply it without difficulty.

In addition, qualified pharmaceutical products may be subject to automatic renewal of registration numbers or one-time licensing.

Besides, the current decrees and guiding circulars are not consistent and timely.

Most clearly, the bidding law takes effect on February 1, 2024, but the decree was signed on February 27, 2024 and has just come into effect.

Therefore, when promulgating laws, there must be synchronous decrees and circulars to be effective.

According to Mr. Danh, there should be regulations that if traditional medicine is produced at traditional medicine hospitals from provincial level and above, it can be sold to local facilities to supply to patients.

Ho Chi Minh City has two traditional medicine hospitals with factories that meet GMP - WHO standards, the only ones in the country, but they cannot be sold because the hospitals are not business establishments.

If you want to sell to another facility, you have to bid. Many hospitals want to buy traditional medicine from traditional medicine hospitals but cannot.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Ha - Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Health Sciences (Ho Chi Minh City National University) - said that we have a very important list of drugs for the pharmaceutical industry, which is the list of drugs covered by health insurance, which plays an important role in people's access.

In fact, the current Pharmacy Law does not mention any criteria, principles, or conditions for a drug to be included in the list of health insurance coverage.

"The Ministry of Health has issued a draft on principles and criteria for including a drug in the list of health insurance payments, but there is no information in the Pharmacy Law on this issue," said Ms. Ha.

According to Ms. Ha, currently there are many effective drugs but they are expensive. There are cases where cancer patients have to pay billions of dong to prolong their life for another year.

"In such cases, should we consider including them in the list of health insurance drugs in the context of the current limited health insurance fund? Choosing drugs for the health insurance list must closely follow medical examination and treatment activities to ensure the rights of health insurance participants," said Ms. Ha.

In June 2024, the Ministry of Health submitted to the National Assembly a draft law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Pharmacy. Accordingly, the draft law amends and supplements a number of regulations on registration and circulation of drugs and pharmaceutical ingredients...

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nhieu-benh-nhan-ung-thu-phai-chi-ca-ti-dong-de-keo-dai-su-song-them-1-nam-20240919110404819.htm