At the moment, the task of centralized drug procurement is still inadequate and overlapping as to the issued documents. The local lack of medicine also happens at the beginning stage.
According to Mr. Nguyen Tri Dung, Director of the NCDPC, in 2018, the list of national centralized drug procurement includes 25 active elements / medicines, 19 of which are for cancer treatment and immunomodulation activity. The last 6 are used for heart treatment.
The NCPDC has requested that no later than June 18, all local centers submit their drug estimate for the supposed session of centralized drug bidding. It is expected that medicines will be send to local centers from the beginning of 2019.
However, many delegates in the training session stated that the organization of the centralized drug bidding in the upcoming August was too hurried, and local centers did not have enough time to prepare their estimate.
Moreover, there is still overlapping among bidding packages, making one medical unit participate in so many packages of national centralized package, health insurance package, local medical package.
According to the representative of the General Hospital of Binh Duong Province, preparing a drug estimate for the next 2 years based only on the drug use of the first six months of 2017 is too inadequate since there are certainly variations in reality.
As said by pharmacist Do Van Dung, Head of the Division of Pharmaceuticals (under the HCMC Department of Health), for an effective drug bidding, the real demand of drugs needs to be carefully considered.
He also suggested that applications of information technology should be fully taken advantage of to guarantee the bidding progress and to control the difference between estimation and the reality.
