The Health Sector announced a planned investment of around 50 billion pesos ($2.6 billion) for mass purchases of medications for the year 2017 through a tendering process, the highest amount ever spent in Mexico on medicine.
The General Director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) Mikel Arriola said that this process of purchasing medication has resulted in over 11 billion pesos in savings in the last three years.
He explained that this year they purchased 1,689 different medical materials, 735 of which were medications and vaccines. Arriola said that the savings allows buying in higher quantities, as demand increases every year. The budget that the IMSS sets for purchasing will be added to budgets reserved by other public institutions like the Health Secretariat and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
Arriola added that with the savings of the last three years, the IMSS was able to fill an additional 16 percent of prescriptions and in 2016 a total of 950 million units of medication will be bought.
In 2016 there were only 775 registered complaints due to lack of medication, compared to nearly 12,000 in 2013.
