Chechnya reveals drug overpricing

The Prosecutor's Office of Chechnya has established numerous facts of deliberate overpricing of medicinal goods by medical establishments and drugstores of the republic. Nine officials are brought to administrative responsibility.

"In the course of checks conducted by prosecutors of fulfilment of legislation requirements in the sphere of pricing medical equipment and drugs, multiple violations were revealed," a source in law enforcement bodies of Chechnya told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Thus, it was revealed that the top managers of the Republic's Dermatovenerologic Dispensary, Grozny and Staro-Yurt Central District Hospitals (CDH), and Itum-Kalin and Sharoy District Hospitals had bought medical goods without signing respective contracts, which resulted in essential overpricing, and, accordingly, to excessive expenses of medical institutions. "In aftermath of these findings, the Prosecutor's Office has brought presentations to the heads of these establishments about elimination of violations, and also initiated 119 cases on administrative offences," the source has noted.

He added that the prosecutor's checks revealed also numerous violations in Chechen drugstores. "They refer to illegal overpricing of basic medicines by drugstores. The guilt for these violations is, first of all, on the managers and employees of the Republic's State Committee of Prices and Tariffs who released the persons guilty of overpricing from the responsibility stipulated by the law. Based on these findings, the Prosecutor's Office has brought in presentations to the Minister of Public Health and the head of the above State Committee demanded to punish those guilty. At present, nine persons have already made disciplinarily responsible," he said.

Let us note here that in the end of January a special laboratory was opened for quality control of medicines in the city of Gudermes, in the southeast of Chechnya, which is unique in Northern Caucasus, It will service not only Chechnya, but also others regions in the South of Russia.