"The cancellation of the drug registration system may lead us to a situation in some countries in Africa, and we are not there," warns Nir Karniel, VP of generics at Teva, referring to the publication in "Israel Today" of the draft Arrangements Law.
The Ministry of Finance wants to make moves that could harm the safety of administering drugs in Israel.
Abolition of registration with the Ministry of Health and reliance on other health authorities, "automatic" transfer of patients to cheap medicines and sale of medicines without pharmacists and vending machines.
According to Karniel, "We definitely think there is a need to solve the problem of delay in prescribing the drugs, but dismantling the pharmacy system is a far-reaching thing. The Corona has shown us that it is important to keep the Ministry of Health strong."
At the same time, pharmacists' organizations are embarking on a struggle.
David Pepo, chairman of the Pharmacists' Union, said that the organization "opposes the dangerous proposal to introduce automatic pharmacies, which are supposed to replace thousands of pharmacists in Israel and exterminate the pharmacy profession."
We issued an urgent letter regarding the matter to the ministers and members of the Knesset. "
Yossi Ofek, CEO of Teva Israel and Director of the Group of African, Middle Eastern and Ukrainian Countries, said, "It is impossible to completely approve in Israel any product approved abroad. Eastern European countries that register products from India can not serve as a model for us. "Drugs of unknown origin. There are also cases, such as with corona vaccines that were first approved by the European Medicines Agency and only later by the FDA. Relying on another agency is problematic."
Yossi Ofek, CEO of Teva. Warned of the move, Photo: Elad Malka
CEO Yossi Ofek added that "the move that the Treasury wants to make is 'pouring the baby with the water'.
In our opinion, it is important to strengthen the pharmacy division by recruiting quality personnel and shortening the registration procedures in things where this can be done without compromising quality.
The Treasury is going for an extreme move. "
Teva is also experiencing delays in the field of drug registration in Israel.
This is a process that is supposed to take up to 270 days and lasts almost two years.
The company currently has 46 drug registration files pending at the Ministry of Health.
Another section that the Treasury seeks to pass in the Arrangements Law stipulates that the HMOs will be allowed to transfer any new patient to "biologically similar" drugs (biosimilar).
These are significantly cheaper drugs, which are not completely identical to the source drugs but their action is similar.
If this section passes, it will for the first time be possible to transfer veteran patients in the middle of treatment to another drug.
Teva also manufactures this type of medicine, although its leaders believe that this is a far-reaching move that is not true.
The Knesset Health Committee will discuss the issue of the Arrangements Law and its implications for the safety of prescribing drugs in Israel in the coming days.
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