Aasandha Company’s Managing Director Aminath Zeeniya has revealed that 56% of the Aasandha budget allocated by the Maldives government is spent on local pharmacies.
The new MD of Aasandha, while speaking at the SOE Committee of the Parliament on Tuesday, December 12, said that the largest portion of Aasandha budget was spent on pharmaceuticals.
She further said that the currently active bulk procurement policy would offset the state’s expenditure made on purchasing medicine.
Zeeniya also revealed 11 of the most in-demand medicine are brought under the said bulk procurement policy right now.
Aasandha held discussions with the World Health Organization (WHO) to seek ways on mitigating the rising expenditure, for which the organization has already provided feasible models.
“We are working to implement this within the first three months. We believe this approach would help reduce prices to an extent,” Zeeniya said.
She further highlighted that Aasandha Company does not have any discretion in listing the pharmacies for which the health insurance scheme would be extended. Instead the discretion lies at policy level, Zeeniya added.
“For instance, designating a particular pharmacy for a certain population. The highest expenditure is incurred for pharmacies after all,” she commented.
Additionally, she emphasized the violations made to the policy in acquiring medicine, which has been restricted more recently with introduction of text messages sent to the buyer containing the OTP. The buyer is required to read the OTP to the pharmacy clerk to make successful purchase of medicine for prescriptions.
At the committee meeting, Zeeniya said that the second highest expenditure from Aasandha was made towards private hospitals. She said that though expenses for procedures were affordable, the final invoiced bill from private hospitals reflect a significantly higher expenditure.
Moreover, the state lacks any control on this mechanism since the Ministry of Health does not have a co-payment agreement with private hospitals.
“For instance, the allocated Aasandha insurance amount for a cesarean operation is MVR 1,000, but when the patient is done with it, the procedure’s cost might be close to MVR 300,000. To reduce this cost, we have to spend on private hospitals the same as for abroad,” Zeeniya said.
The new MD of Aasandha also said that the expenditure on private hospitals can be reduced only by improving the services of Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH), which is the largest state-run hospital in the Maldives.
So far, the Maldives government has spent MVR 1.7 billion on Aasandha from the budgeted total of MVR 2.3 billion.