The Affordable Medicines Program: Since the program launch, Ukrainians have made 17 000 less ambulance calls

This is a significant decrease in the number of ambulance calls made in the event of cardiovascular insufficiency, asthma exacerbation or type 2 diabetes emergencies.

The Affordable Medicines National Prescription Drugs Cost Reimbursement Program, now in its second year, provides for full or partial reimbursement of essential medicines for treatment of cardiovascular diseases, asthma and type 2 diabetes mellitus (also known as type 2 diabetes).

Since its launch, the Program has helped many patients with these diseases receive essential medicines in one of the participating pharmacies across the country: about 20 million prescriptions worth 900 million UAH.

The Affordable Medicines government initiative encourages chronic patients to see healthcare providers on a regular basis, since they require constant care and support. This enables doctors to control the disease course, to timely adjust the treatment and to prevent possible complications.

Therefore, the Program helps to ensure regular intake of prescribed medicines and regular visits to the doctor for checkups, which results in a significant decrease in the number of critical care patients. Available statistics show that during the first year of the program implementation the number of type 2 diabetes patients with normalized blood sugar levels has increased by 6.5%. In the meantime, the number of ambulance calls in the event of asthma attacks has decreased by almost 6% and in case of signs and symptoms of heart attack or stroke – by 4.2%.

To get reimbursable medicines, a patient needs to contact the doctor and get a correct prescription, then, to go to one of the participating pharmacies (with the Affordable Medicines sticker) and get the prescribed medicines free of charge or with a small co-payment.

As many as 239 medicines are currently included in the Program, 47 of which are fully reimbursed and can be obtained in any of the 7 692 participating pharmacies across the country.

This year the Ukrainian government allocated one billion UAH to the Affordable Medicines program. Approximately 30% of this amount has already been used during the first four months of 2018 – about 6 million prescriptions worth 280 million UAH.

Detailed information about the Program: http://en.moz.gov.ua/affordable-medicines

The Affordable Medicines website (in Ukrainian): http://liky.gov.ua/