The Minister of Public Health, Mr. Eugen Nicolaescu, meets the representants from RAA Foundation and UNOPA
March 13th 2008
At the beginning of this year, The Ministry of Public Health (MPH) started a series of initiatives aimed to continue the medical system reform.
One of the components of this reform is represented by the medical services decentralise, including the procurement and medicines and supplies' distribution to the medical units.
The procurement and distribution of medicines specific to HIV and other associated diseases is one of the issues contained by this reform.On MPH proposal, the procurement of these medicines would be made on the regional centres level and their distribution could be made through the open circuit pharmacies network.
Starting the second semester of 2008, the National Union of Organizations of People Infected / Affected by HIV/AIDS (UNOPA) and the Romanian Angel Appeal Foundation (RAA) had expressed in an open, public manner the reticence and concern regarding the pass and application of this measure.
Most of the reasons that stand as the bases of this reticence are related to the fact in the past 5 years in Romania has been functioning an efficient system of ARV medicines procurement and distribution. In this case, as in other cases of medicines therapy, the efficiency has been seen by a yearly number quite constant of new cases of HIV/AIDS, representing an important step in the HIV control in our country.
Following the submitted grievances and requests to meet the decision makers from MPH, including the Minister of Public Health, on March 11th at the Ministry's head office was organized a meeting with the representatives of the two nongovernmental organizations and the central medical authorities.
The discussions were based on sensitive but in the same time important subjects, such as confidentiality, insurance of therapy continuation taking into account the fact that not all the pharmacies that are accessible to the patients can have anytime the ARV therapy, saving time and financial resources, the procurement system of these medicines, monitoring the treatment and the disease evolution, the collaboration with CNAS, etc.
The RAA and UNOPA representatives presented and sustained once again the reasons for their previous request not to change the present distribution and procurement system. The biggest concern of these organizations that represent and defend the right of PLWHA stands for the decrease of the treatment compliance, violating the confidentiality and laboratory and clinical monitoring to higher time scales.
Another issue that was approached was related to the possibility that the PLWHA develop infections with viruses and stems HIV resistant to many of the combinations of medicines used at this moment by an inappropriate treatment applied by the patient or monitored incomplete.
A situation as such could spread among the population some HIV resistant viruses, very difficult to be controlled.These reasons had been also sustained by the campaign of signatures initiated by UNOPA and gathered signatures not only from HIV/AIDS infected people and their families but also by medical staff directly or indirectly involved in medical and support services for PLWHA.
The discussions succeeded to clarify a part of the problems pointed out by RAA and UNOPA, allowing a rephrase and amendment of the initial version of the project for procurement and distribution for ARV therapy and the one for opportunistic infections.
In the same time, the representatives of the two organizations got into discussion also the problem of partnership between governmental partnership and civil society.
With this occasion, the MPH representatives stated the intention of concluding partnerships and closely collaborate with the nongovernmental sector as their purpose is the quality of medical services provided for the population.
The outcomes of this meeting resumed in a press release can be found on: http://http://www.ms.ro/comunicate-de-presa.php?com=1331./.
