Summary Table of Reports on ARV Medications Purchases in 2010 in Russia. Prepared by International Treatment Preparedness Coalition in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ITPCru)
Purchases of ARV Medications in RF in 2010. Explanatory Note When preparing this document we set a goal of trying to obtain information on the auction held by using only public sources of information and not resorting to consulting agencies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. The results are given below for you to study. Organization and Holding of Auction 1. It is necessary to note an extreme non-transparency of the processes of the auction organization and holding. In 2010 the auction platform was changed from the website www.zakupki.gov.ru to the electronic tendering platform of the Sberbank of Russia (www.sberbank-ast.ru). At the same time the scheme of the auction was modified. In 2009 and 2008 Rospotrebnadzor (Federal Supervision Agency for Customer Protection and Human Welfare) and Roszdrav (Federal Agency for Healthcare and Social Development) held one auction with all ARV medications as a lot, while in 2010 the Ministry of Public Health and Social Development organized a separate auction for each medication (total of 39 auctions). In these circumstances notification of holding an auction and tendering itself took a few weeks. The reports on holding of the auctions were posted on the Sberbank website rather carelessly; besides, soon after the auctions have been held, many of them stopped being displayed by the site search engine. Consequently, in order to look through the report on results for most medications you needed either to have an accurate link available, or to search for it manually by entering the auction ID. An alternative and a more efficient option of information search may be found at the website www.maintender.com, which searches for auction results over all existing websites by the key words and does this much more efficiently than the search engine at the Sberbank website. Thus, more often than not the Sberbank website refuses to give information if the name of the medication is entered in the search field (for instance, “lamivudine” or “etravirine”). At the same time the site www.maintender.com easily finds required auction reports, which proves the fact that creation of an efficient search engine is actually possible and already put into practice. 2. There was no competition for more than a half items. In 24 cases out of 39 the auctions were considered invalid due to the lack of competition, which resulted in conclusion of a contract with the supplier at the maximum price. There were various reasons.
For example, in the cases of the two out of 24 medications (namely “Abacavir + Lamivudine + Zidovudine” and “Fosamprenavir, tablets 700 mg”) only one distributor was allowed to participate in the auction since the committee had identified irregularities in the technical documentation of all other bidders. It is curious that in both cases one and the same supplier - OAO Pharmimex – was allowed to participate in the auction, while its competitors failed to complete the documents properly. The manufacturer of the both medications is the company ViiV Healthcare.
In the case of two other medications (“Lamivudine, tablets 150 mg” manufactured by ViiV Healthcare and “Phosphazide, tablets 200 mg” manufactured by a Russian company AZT-Pharma) all participants themselves recalled their bids, which resulted in only one bid available for examination by the committee by the moment of the auction beginning. In both cases the only participant that hadn’t recalled its bid happened to be ZAO Firm TsV Protech.