‘Cutting budget for essential drugs neglects public health'

Korean Pharmacists for Democratic Society submits opinion statement, “Removing the entire budget for the stable supply of essential medicines neglects public health”

Analyzes NA's Health and Welfare Committee's budget plan and sumits an opinion statement

“The entire KRW 1 billion budget allocated for 2023 was cut…an additional KRW 7.5 billion should be allocated.”

The Korean Pharmacists for Democratic Society (CEO Hyeong-geun Shin) criticized the full budget for the stable supply of essential national medicines and urged for additional budget allocation.

 

On the 9th, before the National Assembly’s Health and Welfare Committee presented and deliberated on the next year's budget and proceeded with deliberation, KPDS submitted an opinion after analyzing the 2024 budget plan.

 

Regarding the budget plan, KPDA said, “Regarding the development and support of the pharmaceutical and bio industry, the R&D budget has been expanded significantly, including the existing Research-Focused Hospital Development Project (approximately KRW 60.5 billion), the National New Drug Development Project (approximately KRW 57.9 billion), the Pharmaceutical Industry Development And Support Project (approximately KRW 35.9 billion), Pan-Ministerial Regenerative Medicine Technology Development Project (approximately KRW 35.3 billion), Global Research Cooperation Support Project (approximately KRW 28.7 billion), Electropharmaceutical Technology Development Project (approximately KRW 6.6 billion), Drug Delivery Treatment Technology Development Project (approximately KRW 7.6 billion), Biohealth Investment Infrastructure Linked R&D Project (KRW 2.7 billion), and the new Korean ARPA-H Project (KRW 49.5 billion) and the Joint Learning-Based New Drug Development Acceleration Project (approximately KRW 2.3 billion), etc.

 

The investment is more noteworthy as the R&D budgets of only the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety were increased among the 31 ministries in Korea.” However, KPDA pointed out, “Although it is a small amount compared to the budget plan set for developing new drugs and fostering the pharmaceutical and bio-industry, which costs hundreds of billions of won, we analyzed the budget plan and found some points worth pointing out to improve issues that the public can feel.” The first issue was regarding the budget implementation ▲to resolve concerns about the unstable supply and demand of medicines in the field KPDA said, “A total of 247 drugs were reported to have supply interruptions and supply shortages in 2022 to the MFDS, and 172 in the first half of 2023 alone.

 

However, in MFDS’s 2024 budget, the budget that ensures a stable supply of national essential drugs was completely cut.

 

The KRW 1 billion that was allocated to improve the supply of medicines through consignment manufacturing for 6 items in 2023 was cut.” Therefore, assuming that there are at least 25 drugs to which the government must respond, an additional KRW 7.5 billion should be allocated, KRW 300 million per drug.

 

KPDA said, “One of the difficulties pharmacies complain about out-of-stock drugs is the lack of a way to explain when the out-of-stock issue will be resolved or explain the out-of-stock situation to patients or prescribers.

 

This ultimately depends on the drug supply and demand situation.

 

So we need to improve the transparency of information regarding the drug supply and demand.

 

For this, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it will disclose distribution information through the Korea Pharmaceutical Information Service Center (KPIS), but most medical practitioners are not aware of this, and even if they go to the website, it is difficult to find the information they want.

 

Therefore, the KPIS webpage should be completely rebuilt so that pharmacies, medical institutions, and patients can easily check the status of out-of-stock items and be aware of the expected release date of necessary drugs.” The second was ▲expanding the budget for drug safety management and side-effect damage relief Under the Yoon Suk-Yeol administration, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced a fast-track program for innovative products and announced that it would improve the system to allow faster approval of medical products, but the budget for licensing reviewers in charge of reviewing the medical products had not increased for several years.

 

KPDA said, "In the 2024 budget, the number of personnel for registering clinical trial information and reviewing reports has been reduced from 7 to 3.

 

There is a need to increase the related budget to expand the number of medical product-related review personnel to 500 people by 2024, as in Japan.” Regarding the Side Effect Damage Relief Fund, "Even though the related fund was established 10 years ago, many people are completely unaware of it, and there have been only about 100 cases of damage relief per year for several years.

 

The government should have actively provided guidance and promotion so that people who have suffered damage from the side effects of medicines can seek relief, but its budget is only KRW 80 million.

 

Considering how this year’s advertising budget for drug safety is KRW 3 billion, there is an urgent need to actively execute a promotion budget for the fund.” Regarding the budget for ▲expanding the publicness of pharmacies, KPDA requested, "The government must gradually expand the number of support pharmacies to ensure people's access to medicines, and expand the system so that at least one late-night pharmacy can be operated by each local governments in the future." In addition, KPDA also insisted on ▲securing a minimum budget to guarantee reproductive health.

 

They said, “After the 2019 decision to deem abortion unconstitutional, guaranteeing women’s reproductive health became a major social issue, but all content related to reproductive health was missing from the 2024 budget.

 

We ask for continued research, including the opening of a website for providing related information counseling services at the government level.” In particular, KPDA added, “It is more essential than ever to secure a budget for the out-of-stock drug situation that is still unresolved."