Comprehensive reforms are being carried out in the pharmaceutical sector in Uzbekistan. The main goal of these reforms is to simplify the import of medicines and significantly reduce the timeline for state registration.
The innovations presented to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev are aimed at improving the delivery of quality medicines to the population and aligning the national system with international standards. At the heart of the reforms lies the mechanism of technology transfer.
This mechanism enables foreign pharmaceutical companies to establish production in Uzbekistan and subsequently register their products quickly. This serves to increase the supply of medicines in the domestic market and strengthen export potential.
Procedures related to generic drugs will also change significantly. Their clinical trials will now be conducted in accordance with international standards, which will ensure their rapid entry into the market.
In addition, conditions are being created for the implementation of advanced biotechnological cell preparations in practice. According to Alisher Temirov, Director of the Pharmaceutical Products Safety Center, a differentiated registration system has been introduced for four categories of safety.
This has reduced the review time for applications in the safest category from 150 days to 60 days, to 90 days for the second category, and to 120 days for relatively riskier categories. In addition, medical products of the first safety class (sterile and non-invasive) have been exempted from laboratory and clinical trials.
These measures are aimed at providing the population with safe medicines and simplifying the import of certified products. The process of developing and launching a new original medicine can last from 10 to 15 years and may require expenditures of more than 2 billion US dollars.
Therefore, innovative medicines are much more expensive than generic drugs.
