Patients are waiting to buy medicine at a hospital in HCM City. - Photo tuoitre.vn

HCM CITY – The Government has given HCM City the green light to license the import of rare drugs to meet special treatment needs instead of depending on the Ministry of Health.

They include drugs used to diagnose, prevent or treat group A infectious diseases such as polio, influenza A-H5N1 and plague, cancer, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and some other serious diseases.

The city will also even have the right to grant import licences for drugs otherwise not licensed in Việt Nam to meet treatment needs for emergency use such as anti-toxicity, anti-transplant rejection, and prevent and treat anaphylactic shock.

The director of its Department of Health, Tăng Chí Thượng, said a licensing regime is being developed for the purpose.

Such licensing used to be the health ministry’s prerogative.

Pharmaceutical companies often aggregate demand from a number of localities to apply for import licenses, which takes a lot of time, often several months. So, allowing the city to import would circumvent that problem Thượng said.

The city is home to many large hospitals and receives serious cases from many other provinces and cities.

In recent times imports of rare drugs and those used in emergencies have faced difficulties, leading to shortages.

As the intensive treatment centre for the entire south and even some central provinces, ensuring it has timely and sufficient supply of drugs has become an indispensable need.

The health department has instructed hospitals to work with pharmaceutical companies to get drug import licenses.

The city will proactively monitor the situation and help businesses import promptly.

Import licenses issued by the city are valid for one year.

His department would also advise the City to trial stockpiling of emergency and rare drugs since they cannot wait for import procedures to be carried out periodically, Thượng added. – VNS