Caretaker Health Minister: Public tenders for cancer tests to be investigated

Public procurement for tests to detect cervical cancer and colon cancer will be investigated, said the caretaker Minister of Health, Assoc. Prof. Mihail Okoliyski, in the program "Sunday 150" on BNR.

Earlier this week, he informed about a serious increase in prices for two public procurement contracts in the Ministry of Health.

The Agency for State Financial Inspection (ADFI) and, if necessary, the prosecutor's office will investigate them, Okoliyski pointed out.

“We have been waiting for a real screening for the human papillomavirus (HPV) for so many years. We are not just talking about cervical cancer here. We are talking about HPV-caused diseases affecting men as well, which is why we are trying to vaccinate both boys and girls. Through this screening, we can examine hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians - men and women,” said the Health Minister. According to him, it should be checked whether the tests correspond to the market price in other countries.

“We have hypotheses and data that a similar offer is eight times cheaper than the "Tsotsorkov" Foundation, which conducted the previous screening, which was very successful, for colon cancer,” said Assoc. Prof. Okoliyski.

“In the ministry, we need to see who made the decision and how this decision was entrusted to an external member to conduct a market survey. This should be a very serious procedure with many people to be acting as controlling bodies,” the minister said.

“The intention is good. Everyone along the chain is conscientious, and somewhere it's failing because someone obviously wants to ‘have houses in Tuscany or somewhere else’,” Okoliyski pointed out.

“This morning I had conversations with the HPV coalition. The people there are concerned. They say – ‘we have not participated in discussions’. These are the general practitioners who, in the end, should be conducting these campaigns,” the minister commented.

The Ministry will check all centralized tenders, he noted.

In the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), there are measures that we may lose. We are working with the Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the EU funds – Maria Nedina, and we are currently saving the investment in the State Psychiatric Hospital in Kurilo. This is of key importance to me, said the caretaker Minister of Health.

There is a project to move it to a former building of a transport hospital, here at the cloverleaf in the "Nadezhda" district in Sofia. This will be a dream for all of us who work in mental health. An example of good practice, he commented.

But this investment may fail because there are still two weeks left in which a contract with a gentleman needs to be finalized, who has to complete the renovation. And this gentleman has, I think, won another 14 public procurement contracts, he has done his work in the other psychiatric hospitals, but things are delayed here, said Assoc. Prof. Okoliyski.

In the "Prof. Ivan Mitev" Children's Hospital, the problem has not yet been resolved, the minister said in response to a question about what is happening in the hospital. There is a team, pediatric pulmonologists, who are under contract with "Pirogov". They are being "tempted" to go to "Pirogov" with the whole team and to strip this unit in the children's hospital. I cannot say why this is happening, the minister pointed out.

“We are conducting analyses, and we have also launched audits in these medical institutions that have some strange activity. I have not fired the director of "Pirogov" Hospital, nor do I intend to fire anyone at the moment,” said Assoc. Prof. Okoliyski.

We are currently analyzing the activity, which will be through the Ministry of Health and through the National Health Insurance Fund. We have agreed with the supervisory board that these things will be reviewed – order of hospitalizations, hospitals with atypical results, he pointed out.

“These are some of my main tasks, which I presented to Prime Minister Gyurov. And he accepted them. So we will try to optimize the activity everywhere and make the treatment and investments more effective,” the minister said.

There are medicines that cannot become more expensive because they are part of a positive list. There are some complex applications being made by the holders of registrations, and in fact, these medicines have hardly become more expensive or are at the same prices, he replied to a question about an average 10% increase in the price of medicines in the pharmacy network.

The medicines that are not part of such a mechanism are becoming more expensive, and they have the right to increase in price only within the framework of inflation. According to official data, I do not think that inflation is 10%. Therefore, they should not become that expensive, the minister commented.