Albanians pay more than EU for medicine
16/07/2014 00:00
The Washington Agreement Must Be Reactivated! 06/01 19:04
Albanians pay more for medicine than any people in the European Union. A
World Bank report notes that an Albanian pays in cash 55% of the
medicine, the highest level in the region, and only 45% of this money is
used by the government for buying medicaments.
3% of the families go bankrupt due to health spending. The Minister of Health declared that this was one of the main reasons that brought the intervention for the law on medicaments.
“No other country spends 1/5th of the money for health. Developed countries spend 70%. The wholesale market of medicaments has 30 million USD for its usage. These are a cost for the Albanian people. We have more expensive medicaments than other countries in the region”, Beqja declared.
The WB report says that the financial protection of families is weak and the health care quality remains a big concern.
The public spending for health in 2013 were only 2.6% of the GDP, but patients are often not diagnosed right or take take wrong treatment, even with a higher dosage, the report says.
The Health Care Fund Director, Astrit Beci, declared that doctors contribute for higher prices of medicaments in Albania, who give expensive receipts, after having abusive connections with pharmaceutical companies.
World Bank representative in Albania, Tahsein Sayed, valued the reformed undertaken by the Pharmaceutical sector, which, according to him, will affect the increased efficiency and the quality of hospital services.
The World Bank underlined several key issues. According to her, the comparisons of prices with other Western balkan countries show that Albania has a high potential to reduce the medicament prices.
The supply limitations remain a big obstacle for the realization of price drops, which makes medicaments more expensive for a huge group of the population.
“The main objective should be reducing the level of joint payments; creating spending and insuring the value in exchange of money for public spending in health, for medicine, and increasing the access to life saving medicaments; controlling the increase of spending for medicaments and guaranteeing medicaments with receipts in a rational way”, she said. The World Bank representative valued the project of the electronic receipt that will be tested soon.
Top Channel
