Sanction insulin

There are about 4 million patients in Russia diabetes mellitus. As many as 5 million people have not been examined and do not know anything about their illness. Huge figures for a huge country, where every fifteenth citizen has a dangerous illness.

In 10 percent of diabetics, type 1 diabetes is diagnosed, when the hormone insulin necessary for the splitting of sugars is not produced in the patient's body (unlike type 2 diabetes mellitus in which insulin is produced enough, but it is not perceived by the body and can not be used for the intended purpose processes of metabolism).

The main form of release of insulin is a solution or suspension for subcutaneous administration in the form of syringes-pens (foams) with replaceable cartridges. That is, you insert the necessary cartridge with the medicine into the syringe pen and make the injection yourself without help from the outside. Conveniently. Purely. There is no need for outside help or strict conditions of asepsis.

pen-pen with insulin

The entire pharmaceutical market for insulin for diabetics in Russia is divided between three main companies: Danish Novo Nordisk, American Eli Lilly and French Sanofi. Domestic insulin producers occupy a percentage share in this general "pie" (I know only Biosulin, Rosinsulin and Rinsulin preparations of domestic production) and do not have enough popularity among patients.

Factors contributing to the popularity of imports are many: this is our traditional admiration for imports, a substantially smaller resource for advertising and promoting finished products of domestic production and the main cost of production and its high-tech, as will be discussed below.

Insulin purchases by 99% are produced by the state, which then distributes it to needy patients. This predetermined the development of the industry in the development of the government's strategy "Pharma 2020", which stated that 50% of drugs and sugar-reducing ones, including, should be produced in Russia. Probably wanted to save on purchases, but it turned out as always ...

The production of insulin is not just a complicated process, but a complex one.This is not stamping the heap of generics from popular active substances and substances, which can be entrusted to guest workers in any basement. For example, the production of substances is protected by the strictures of rapists and murderers in the most closed prison, and the production is highly technological. It is easier to master space technologies than to learn how to produce high-quality and well-purified insulin.

So the Danish company Novo Nordisk produces insulin through a complex biotechnological rearrangement of yeast bacteria. Americans from the company Eli Lilly implant the genomic material in the E. coli, which produces proinsulin, and it is then converted into insulin. In general, the process is the most complicated and even twisting arms to foreign producers in the process of transferring insulin production to the territory of Russia has not brought any result. They found ways to circumvent all prohibitions.

The French company Sanofi bought an insulin plant in Orel in 2009, where it successfully packs insulin produced by its German unit into foams and produces one type of locally produced insulin, but it has not gained popularity, is seen not technologically or dirty.And Novo Nordisk built a plant in Kaluga, where it also packs Danish insulin. That is, there were no technologies from this restructuring in the country, except that a small number of residents of these regions were recruited to pack imported drugs with a good salary and working conditions.

All the available insulin production in Russia is either the packing of imported substances, or the production of unpopular insulin, probably because of the shortcomings of the technological process and the lack of modern technologies, which we have not been able to share with anyone, in this matter there is no need to feed special illusions.

In the world everything is divided - the West produces high-tech goods and substances, China - stamps all kinds of electronics, sews clothes and shoes and other traditional goods at low prices, it's unclear just what the world has prepared for Russia - the role of supplier of raw materials? Why then all these movements and import substitution, if the real progress since 2009-2010, when the government was concerned about this problem and the technological backlog was not? Questions without answer ...

Introduce tomorrow, our or foreign government sanctions on pharmaceuticals and medicines, we can immediately lose more than 1 million citizens or transfer them to the category of non-working disabled. The process of selecting a new insulin and a new scheme of therapy is difficult, it does not do without inpatient care, where patients are carefully selected the necessary dosage. Can all domestic hospitals accommodate as many suddenly formed patients, and even after the next reform and reduction of staff? Of course not.

It turns out that only the elite will survive and the black market of medicines will thrive. The country will go smuggled insulin and, of course, it will not be delivered for state, but for private funds with a premium for illegal transportation. Therefore, with sanctions, our state men should be more careful not to provoke or bring the situation to a stalemate, because the lives of a significant number of Russian citizens are at stake. And this is only one possible problematic, and how many of them in other spheres of life of our state and citizens, where, without thinking, you can break no less firewood.