Recently, Minister for Health Maxim Stepanov during a regular briefing said that Ukraine planned to switch to 2D coding of medicines by 2023. That would help to avoid counterfeit products in pharmacies, as well as to protect patients.
The Ministry of Health, together with national manufacturers has already agreed on an Action plan.
2D coding allows controlling the turnover and tracking that pharmacies are not falsified. That means a special marking (a two-dimensional barcode on the package), data entered in the unified state system for the medicines circulation monitoring.
"Of course, this is not a quick solution, it is impossible to implement in a month. We will do it gradually," Stepanov said.
He also clarified that for this purpose it would be necessary to re-equip the manufacture. "Someone has already done it. We believe that in 2-2.5 years we will be able to use 2D coding absolutely".
Firstly, medicines that are included in the "Available medicines" program will be encoded, and then those entering the territory of Ukraine from abroad.
Nowadays, you can check medicines using the reference book Rx index 2020. It stores information about the therapeutic equivalence of generic drugs.