Organizational and pharmaceutical aspects of improving medicinal provision of children (on the example of St. Petersburg)

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of providing children with safe and effective medications. The lack of medicines that ensure agerelated dosing of active ingredients and correspond to the current level of development of pediatrics is the reason for irrational (off-label, unlicensed drug) administrations. According to a survey of 157 experts from St. Petersburg (doctors of the highest category working in pediatric departments), off-label therapy is represented by 113 international nonproprietary names of drugs belonging to 40 pharmacotherapeutic groups — mainly in the form of tablets (51.79%), solutions for injection (13.86%), as well as capsules (8.64%).
The problem of children-appropriate medicines can be solved by organizing small-scale and individual pharmaceutical manufacturing of drugs. To date, on the territory of the Russian Federation, 1648 licensees have registered the right to manufacture drugs for medical use, less than 2% of licensees have the ability to manufacture narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, 1/4 of all compounding pharmacies are concentrated in two regions of the Russian Federation: Moscow (12%) and St. Petersburg (9%). The problem of the individual manufacturing of medicines is largely due to the imperfection in regulatory environment in pharmaceutical industry. Based on the systematization of the results of fundamental interviewing of compounding pharmacies managers in St. Petersburg, ways to improving the existing mechanisms of state regulation are proposed.