Russia proposes drug certificates amid rising prices and drug shortages - intelligence
Kyiv • UNN
The Russian government is promoting a bill on personalized drug certificates worth 4,500 rubles for low-income individuals, but the average price of a drug package has increased by 13.6%. Patients with chronic kidney diseases in ten regions do not receive vital medications, and the number of medical scientists has decreased by 27% in 15 years.
The Russian government is promoting a bill on personalized drug certificates worth 4.5 thousand rubles for low-income families and citizens in crisis situations. But against the backdrop of rapidly rising prices, this aid is meager, UNN reports with reference to the Foreign Intelligence Service.
Details
As reported by intelligence, from January to September 2025, the average price of a drug package in Russia jumped by 13.6% compared to last year – to 416 rubles, which is 3.5 times higher than official inflation.
The problem is particularly acute in the field of nephrology. In at least ten regions, patients with chronic kidney diseases do not receive vital medications. In St. Petersburg, "Parsabiv" is not issued to hemodialysis patients. In Bashkortostan, there is a shortage of "Eralfon", "Mirtsera" and "Ketosteril", as well as iron-based drugs. In the Saratov region, pre-dialysis patients were left without "Kalimeit" and "Zemplar". The reason is chronic underfunding of the system. Supplies are also decreasing: for example, 531 thousand packages of "Ketosteril" entered the market in the first nine months of 2025 – 24% less than last year
The crisis also affects the scientific sphere. In medicine, over the past 15 years, Russia has lost every fourth researcher: in 2024, only 8,387 medical scientists remained – 27% less than in 2010.
In total, as of early 2024, 338.9 thousand researchers worked in all fields in the country. This is 40.5 thousand less than in 2015, i.e., minus 11%. Only during the years of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the number of scientists decreased by thousands more, and at least 2.5 thousand left the country, among them – more than 800 with international recognition