The secretary of the Association of patients with kidney diseases (APBZ), Mr Ivan Dimitrov, has alarmed that for ten days now there have been patients with transplanted organs for whom there are no medicines. Many patients have to travel every day from all over Bulgaria to find out that there is no supply of their important medicines. APBZ has repeatedly alarmed the management of the Ministry of Health that such a moment can arrive and that the lack of medicines will put at risk the health and life of the transplanted patients.
Many Bulgarians who need the life-supporting medicines have been grasped by panic but they arrived with hope every day from various places of the country. Some patients have had to stay at hotels in Sofia to wait for the day X when MH will condescend to allow the supply of medicines to a certain pharmacy. After the protest of APBZ and reports in the media the medicine were supplied on the 16th of March at 19:30 and part of these patients were relieved to receive their medicines, but we wonder if the same might not happen again in a week or in a month?

Until yesterday NHIS had not paid the sums due to hospitals and doctors in outpatient healthcare despite the generous promises from various sources. The prime mister Borisov himself promised that all money for the month of January would be paid by March the 10th. During the week NHIS paid only to the general practitioners but without the interest that is owed for the delay according to the NFA. There is no guarantee that the money will be paid next week. Rumours say that the hospitals will not receive the entire sums they are owed. By law the NHIS is obliged to pay by the end of the next month for the reported work; in fact the money for the month of January should have been paid not later than February 28th. As a result in many places doctors and other personnel have only received advance payments and the debts to the suppliers of medicines and consumables continue to rise.

The government has accepted a proposition for changes to the Law on medical products in human medicine. The change provides that NHIS determines by itself for which medicines and how much to reimburse This practice existed until two years ago and it was the reason for regular mix-ups in determining the list of medicines and the conduction of tenders and negotiations and led to a series of lawsuits. Upon accepting the LMPHM by European model a Commission for the Positive List to the Counsel of Ministers was created and only the commission determined which medicines would be included in the list and what sum would be paid. The current changes take us a couple of years back and the work of the Commission for the Positive List is rendered irrelevant to a large extent because it duplicates an analogous commission that will be created at the NHIS.
The NHIS again creates a desk where the pharmaceutical companies and their distributors will wait. The procedure for inclusion of medicine in the lists of NHIS is prolonged and transparency and predictability are limited. All that is a prerequisite for corruption.