Armenian parliament advances illegal medicines bill

The Armenian parliament has approved the first reading of a bill that aims to boost the powers of regulatory authorities to tackle falsified and otherwise illegal medicines.

Among the measures introduced in the bill are greater powers to carry out inspections of pharmacies within medical institutions, according to a report from the ARKA News Agency. The changes would also address concerns that some organisations are not carrying out the destruction of expired medicines or drugs that should not be used for other reasons

MP Lusine Badalyan (pictured) told the Parliament that there had been cases where substantial quantities of medicines were discovered that according to records should have been destroyed, potentially allowing them to remain in the supply chain for use.

"Under the new legislation, companies will be required to notify regulators five days in advance of destroying medication batches. This would allow regulators to send representatives to witness the destruction, and the process must also be recorded on video by the company," according to ARKA.

The official notice of the new bill (in Armenian) can be viewed here.

A 2021 survey of pharmacy practitioners in Armenia, published in the European Journal of Public Health in 2021, found that nearly 90 per cent of them believed that substandard and falsified medicines are a threat to public health, with 77 per cent saying they are present in the domestic supply chain.

Nearly all of them (96 per cent) said that there was a need to strengthen the healthcare system in Armenia by introducing additional tools for assuring the quality of medicines and address shortages – billed as a threat by 85 per cent of respondents.