From the end of April the Government wants hospitals to buy plasma Blood Institute – Observer

by the end of April, the public hospitals will have to pass the turn to the Portuguese Institute of Blood and Trasplantação (IPST) to "meet the needs of plasma". The Government published this Tuesday the ruling that still defines the Ministry and the IPST make efforts to "to ensure maximum transparency" in the business of plasma.

In the text of the order signed by the secretaries of State for Health, published in the official Gazette of the Republic, it is defined that "the Portuguese Institute of Blood and Transplantation must submit an operating plan for the use of the plasma collected in Portugal and that, until the end of the first quarter of 2017, institutions and entities of the National Health Service pass the appeal to the IPST, I. P., to meet their needs in plasma".

The measure comes at a time that the Public Ministry is investigating suspicions of corruption active and passive in the business of plasma-derived blood, done with the public hospitals to the Portuguese. A business that, in Portugal, is dominated by the Nineties, including this 1999, at which time it was assigned the monopoly of the sale of plasma to the company through a contest. In the jury of this contest was the ex-president of the INEM and the Regional Administration of Health, José Cunha Ribeiro, who was detained on suspicion of having benefited from the Nineties.

A week later, the Government does publish an order where it determines that the IPST, supported by the Ministry of Health, will ensure that "the adoption of tender procedures that favour competition and reduce the risk of situations of monopoly or exclusivity, without, however, jeopardizing the safety of patients or the quality of the treatment provided".

Still, the Government justifies the changes that you want to see arise on the ground "until the end of the first quarter of 2017", with other reasons, not the judicial investigation. When you listed the reasons for the measure, the Ministry talks on the utilization of donation voluntary blood in Portugal, on the recommendation of 1990 of the Council of Europe, to which "States should develop mechanisms that will ensure self-sufficiency in plasma", or the "strengthening of the public authorities of the IPST, I. P., in the matter of regulation and active intervention in the sector so as to ensure an appropriate balance between the different sectors in the pursuit of the public interest". And you want the new rules are ready now:

• The Government establishes 30 days (until the end of January) to the IPST present "an operational plan for the use of the plasma collected in Portugal, by the Institute, and the national Hospital";
• Until the end of the first quarter of 2017 the institutions and entities of the National Health Service will have to appeal to the IPST for source plasma. And these entities have to register in a page online its forecasts of consumption;
• for the duration of the transition period, any new procedure must have a "prior binding opinion of the IPST";
• Be constituted a commission for the monitoring of the National Strategic Programme for Fractionation of Human Plasma 2015-2019.

the intention of The Government to move forward with this measure was advanced in the edition of this Tuesday of the journal Public. The Observer questioned the Ministry of Health on the information and, in response, was forwarded to the publication, which, however, became available in the Diário of the Republic.

This article was updated at 10: 20am with the order published in the official Gazette of the Republic