The national network of drugstores consists of 1,510 authorized pharmacies. These are located non-uniformly and are concentrated in municipalities and district centers. Out of 1,477 villages, only 418 have local pharmacies. To extend the network in rural areas, the authorities designed a bill to offer subsidies, IPN reports.

In the informative note to the bill, he Ministry of Health said the people from villages have to travel to district centers to buy medicines. As a result, the treatment of chronic diseases is delayed and morbidity among the people increases, leading to lower life expectancy. The main cause for such a situation is the lack of economic interest among businesses in investing in opening drugstore sin villages due to low sales, the profit margin imposed on drugs, the lack of pharmacists in rural areas.

The Ministry noted that a number of measures have been taken the past few years to ensure access to drugs in villages, such as extra-budgetary drugstores and mobile pharmacies. As they weren’t viable in the long run, these initiatives failed.

The current initiative aims to identity about 150 villages with more than 1,000 inhabitants which do not have community drugstores, are situated far from the district center or highways, have a Health Center or any other primary medical assistance and their local authorities are ready to provide spaces free. A subsidization scale based on the volume of monthly returns will be worked out.