Bars from Serbia, Bosnia to Extinction From Kosovo pharmaceutical Market

The need to replace these drugs is linked to the 100 per cent tax, which the Government of Kosovo has imposed on all imports from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Some patients, mostly chronically ill, have been using drugs that have been imported from these two countries for years. Now, they must necessarily replace the drugs they have used, with those coming from other markets, mainly from European Union countries. Replacing drugs, they do it with the help of doctors or pharmacists.

Merita Sadriu, a patient, says he had initially hesitated to replace the medicine he had been using for several years, which is produced in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Once I realized it had the same effect on the medicine, but only inside it changed, I agreed to replace it. I consulted with the doctor, but with the pharmacist, and they showed me the effect is the same. I've been using hypertension medication, éloprill, which is now lacking, but I've replaced it, says Sadriu.

Pharmacist Alban Descu, speaking of Radio Free Europe, says the pharmaceutical market, these two states' products have replaced them very quickly with products from countries in the region, but also in Europe.

He also says that a market innovation is that new drugs are cheaper, especially those belonging to local production.

There is no “They are being replaced with imports from countries in the region, but also from Europe and also local products. The price stands for good, they're free. So, the same substance, the same medicine, but only the lungs distinguish”, Descu said.

He shows that at first it has been difficult to convince patients to change medicines they have used for years.

Some patients as secularists who leave pharmaceuticals believe in the kind of medicine they've been using for years and lack of proper information do not trust the other drug. We explain to you that the substance is the same, only in itself. But patients often resist having learned from certain types of mainly Bosnian drugs. Although there are also patients who easily exceed it, we as pharmacists are obliged to convince them that the drug has the same substances and the same effects”, Descu said.

On the other hand, Florina Berisha from the Association of Kosovo Pharmacists said the pharmaceutical market has not felt the lack of medicines from the state of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, since they have been replaced immediately.

However, she says the absence of certain products being produced in Serbia because they are licensed, but are European products has been noted in the Kosovo market.

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Berisha says drugs imported to Kosovo belong to different countries.

“mainly from Europe are imported to Kosovo, but there is also market from America, China, India, but which dominates the European market because it is the easiest import”, she said.

The Kosovo government, in November last year, decided to increase the 100 per cent customs tax on products imported from Serbia and Bosnia. The products include drugs.

Kosovo has been supplied with drugs from Bosnia for some 20 years and two years from Serbia, since Serbian state drugs have been recorded late, as they have not been imported at all over the years.