Only 800 of 6,000 medicine brand names in Moldova are registered by domestic producers

Of the roughly 6,000 medicine brand names registered in Moldova, only 800 names, or 14 percent, are produced by the 22 domestic pharmaceutical companies, and only 15 of them are proposed by domestic researchers, – this information was presented at the conference titled “New pharmaceutical preparations from domestic raw materials”, held as part of the specialized exhibition MoldMEDIZIN&Mold DENT, Info-Prim Neo reports. Victor Ghicavyi, president of the Moldovan Scientific Society of Pharmacologists, said the value of the locally produced drugs was around 15 million US dollars in the period 2007-2008, while imports of drugs in the same period represented around 250 million US dollars. Ghicavyi says that the process of producing drugs encounters many difficulties in Moldova, the path from the synthesis of the active substance to the final medicine is often excessively long and implies cooperation among a great number of specialists, which is mostly inharmonious. At the same time, the results achieved over the last years (2005 – 2008) by a number of institutions of the Moldovan Academy of Sciences and other research entities have demonstrated that Moldova has a considerable research potential as well as domestic raw materials needed for producing new medicines locally. However, all these necessitate consolidation and a clearer support on the part of the Government, stated Victor Ghicavyi. Valentin Tofan, the president of the Association of Pharmaceutical and Parapharmaceutical Producers, says that the domestic companies prefer to import raw materials, because it is much cheaper. “We’d be glad to produce something original from local raw materials. Yet we think that if the government was ready to invest in creating a small-scale production laboratory for technology exchange, which would facilitate the communication between the developers of the drug and the producers, the process of elaborating new medicines would be way shorter and more efficient”, Tofan added. The specialized exhibition MoldMEDIZIN&Mold DENT, the XV edition, took place at the fairground Moldexpo in Chisinau during September 8-11.