Hrustemović: The Agency for Medicines is working with increasing difficulty, departments are disappearing!

(Patria) - The Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices of BiH was founded in 2009, and its Control Laboratory is based in Sarajevo. 

The Agency's scope in the field of medicines is broad, including issuing licenses, placing medicines on the market, renewals, cancellations and amendments, laboratory testing of medicine quality and providing expert opinions, reporting or approving clinical trials and monitoring adverse drug reactions, as well as pharmaceutical inspection of legal entities engaged in the production and wholesale of medicines.

The ALMBIH Control Laboratory operates within the Agency and is a member of the European Network of Official Medicines Control Laboratories (OMCL network), operating according to ISO 17025 standards.

One of the goals for which the Agency for Medicines was established is the establishment and supervision of a single market for medicines and medical devices, as well as their availability throughout BiH.

“It is not a bureaucratic institution; it brings money into the budget. We generate about 12 million KM annually, and we have withdrawn very little for salaries and other material costs. The material status of employees is very poor, humiliating, and the worst among healthcare workers at the state level of BiH. The Agency is mainly composed of healthcare workers, doctors, pharmacists, laboratory technicians, and other administrative staff who are qualified to work in such a very important Agency,” stated Ramo Hrustemović, president of the Agency's Trade Union.

The Agency is financially dependent on the Council of Ministers, despite having its own revenues. 

“The Croatian Agency for Medicines is a regulatory body that independently decides which experts to train, how much money to plan and spend on it. At the initiative of the Agency's Trade Union, we launched an initiative with the possibility of finding an increase in salaries for all employees in the Agency, with the Ministry of Civil Affairs led by Adil Osmanović and the Director of the Agency, Aleksandar Zolak,” Hrustemović noted.

Minister Osmanović immediately proposed the formation of a working group, which drafted a proposal for a Decision based on complexity, which would lead to the implementation of the aforementioned two steps: salary increases for certain positions based on complexity and defining a set of positions for which a transition to a higher salary grade would be sought. 

The Professional Council, at its session, acknowledged the Decision on salary increases and forwarded it to the Council of Ministers for decision-making.

“We believe that the Council of Ministers will seriously consider and adopt our request regarding the possibility of a justified salary increase. I warn, and it is not our goal, that they leave us with the only possible tool, which is a strike, if our demands are not met,” Hrustemović emphasized.

Due to the difficulties in hiring qualified personnel and the poor material status, it is expected that certain sectors within the Agency will face operational challenges.

Sectors are slowly turning into departments, and departments are slowly disappearing.

As confirmed to the Patria agency by several companies dealing with the trade of medical equipment, aids, and medicines, the consequences of the disrupted situation within the Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices are already being felt. 

"We are waiting much longer for licenses and controls than in previous years. The employees themselves say they cannot process all requests. All of this also affects the business of numerous companies that trade medical devices, impacting our deadlines for tenders, which ultimately leads to us not winning contracts because the documentation from the Agency is also delayed," said a Patria source from a Sarajevo-based company.