GOVERNMENT WILL REGULATE SALE OF MEDICINES.

Reacting to chronic and widespread shortages across Russia, Yevgeny Primakov announced yesterday that the government will regulate the prices of medicines. The Russian prime minister said the market for medicines was characterized by “criminality,” “law-flouting” and speculation, adding that a ceiling “not to be overstepped” needed to be imposed on retail prices for drugs and medicines. Primakov called President Boris Yeltsin later yesterday to tell him about the cabinet’s discussion about regulating medicine prices. Dmitri Yakushkin, Yeltsin’s press secretary, said the president approved the government’s steps. Yeltsin did not show up at the Kremlin for work yesterday, and canceled a series of meetings scheduled for that day. Yakushkin said the president’s health was good, and that he was inundated with work (Russian agencies, January 15).

Vladimir Strodubov, Russia’s health minister, fleshed out some of the plans for regulating the medicines market. The government, he said, supported an initiative for a system of registering prices on medicine. This means that a company, when it gets permission to sell a given medicine, will have to inform the government what its proposed retail rates for that medicine are. Strodubov said the government had also decided to create “operational reserves” of essential medicines for treating illnesses such as tuberculosis and diabetes. The government will also change the system by which people receive special privileges for getting medicine, so that it is targeted at the truly needy (Russian agencies, January 14).

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