Taguhi Hakobyan
Nora Abrahamyan
Gayane Manukyan

The fact that the control of the pharmaceutical industry is in shabby condition was not refuted even by the Office of Supervision Services of the President of Armenia. Otherwise the president would not have held a meeting to direct his service to examine the process of control over the quality and sale of drugs in ten Yerevan pharmacies. The aim of the inspection conducted at random by Supervision Services officers, a Public Television crew and employees of the Pharmaceutical Agency, CJSC was to find out whether there are unregistered drugs in Armenian pharmacies. The inspection determined that there are unregistered drugs in almost all of them. In ten pharmacies, forty-one different unregistered drugs were discovered. Among these were popular drugs such as baralgin, 1% tetracycline ointment, calcium chloride of uncertain origin (5%, 100 ml), paracetamol, nicotine amides, eucalyptus solution, etc. It was also found out that some types of drugs were obviously fake even through visual examination, according to specialists.

Drugs imported to Armenia are registered and approved for sale only after laboratory testing by the Pharmaceutical Agency, CJSC. According to Vahram Abrahamyan, a leading specialist in the Office of Supervision Services, a document regarding the unregistered drugs they discovered was sent to the Ministry of Health and later to the Ministry of State Revenues and to the Office of the Prosecutor General. It happens that unregistered drugs are imported by means that are outside Customs Department control.

Abrahamyan noted that drugs are imported through humanitarian assistance with an expiration time that is running out, and if they are not sold within this period they are considered expired. He assured us that the drug-importing organizations are notified and they usually calculate the necessary quantity of each drug to be imported. But the drugs that haven’t been sold remain in pharmacies, and there are no guarantees that they won’t be sold. Susanna Petrosyan, assistant to the lawyer for the Consumers’ Union NGO, provided us with data they received from consumers in 2001-2002. One customer discovered that the eye-drops he had bought at a pharmacy at 30 Komitas Street were fake. Another person who bought Trifosadenit from the same pharmacy found out that a new label had been pasted over the expired label.

One person stopped using the blood- pressure medicine Clofilin that he had bought at the Malatia Market after he learned that Clofilin pills are white. The pills he bought were yellow. The people who sell drugs at the Malatia market don’t have licenses, and when they learned that the Consumers’ Union was going to carry out inspections there, they stayed away for several days.

According to Government Decision # 478 of July 31, 1999, expired drugs must be destroyed at the importer’s expense. This decision stipulates that the Ministry of Ecology must define the procedure for destroying expired drugs. Anahit Alexandryan, the head of the department of control of dangerous substances and waste products of the Ministry of Ecology, assures us that they take a census of synthesized dangerous substances. Expired drugs are classified as dangerous waste products. The Ministries of Ecology and Health have jointly developed a procedure for destroying the drugs. According to Alexandryan, there are no enterprises in Armenia where expired drugs can be safely destroyed. But it is possible to use the existing capacities of Armenian enterprises. For example, some types of drugs can be destroyed at the cement factory.

In 1999, jointly with the Ministry of Health, a census of the drugs present at the time in storage places, hospitals, pharmacies, and in Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defense and the Customs Departments storage was taken. It amounted to 100 metric tons.

It is calculated that it would take $1,000 to destroy one metric ton of drugs in Armenia. As Article 14 of the Law on Drugs states, all the expenses related to the destruction of drugs must be borne by the organization in possession of the drugs.

What do they do with expired drugs in the pharmacies? Here are the responses to our inquiries in a number of Yerevan pharmacies.

The Unipharm Pharmacy - We store the expired drugs, as there is no procedure for destroying them.

The Arnika Pharmacy - Because the government has not developed any procedure for destroying the drugs, we have stored our expired drugs for three years now. If necessary we can keep them for another 30 years.

The Pharmest Pharmacy - We write off the drugs and destroy them at our own expense. We burn some of them, we bury others. The Pharmaceutical Inspection deals with that.

The Pharm Don Pharmacy - We throw them out into the garbage can. Keeping them is an unnecessary headache.

The Asteria Pharmacy - We store them. In one year we accumulated five cartons of drugs.

The Pharmapharm Pharmacy - As soon as the drugs are expired we throw them out into the garbage can. We have already thrown out 15-25 cartons of drugs.

The Sav Pharmacy - We store them. There are Armenian drugs that go bad well before the expiration date.

When we talked to Tatul Hakobyan, the deputy minister of health, he assured us that it is permitted to import the drugs that have at least one year until they expire. An exception is made for the drugs imported as humanitarian assistance -- their expiration time can be up to six months. The Ministry of Health ordered all medical institutions to present lists of expired drugs and their quantities in kilograms. To our question: “Perhaps it is because of the large amounts of money required that the Ministry of Ecology is not in a rush to deal with the destruction of the accumulated expired drugs?” the deputy minister responded: “There are cheaper, easier ways to destroy drugs. When the procedure is officially adopted, we will decide which method to employ”. But for the time being, 100 metric tons of expired drugs - very dangerous waste products - are stored in various residential areas of Armenia, and no one knows when and how they will be destroyed.