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Health debt is growing

The COVID pandemic has resulted in a so-called health debt. Prof. Andrzej Fal, President of the Board of Directors of the Polish Public Health Association, cited difficulties in access to doctors, excessively long queues to specialists, and low health awareness among the reasons for the public debt phenomenon. According to Eurostat, there is an average of 2.4 doctors per 1,000 Polish residents. This is the worst result in the entire European Union. An OECD report shows that the number of doctors in Poland has not increased for almost 20 years! Before the pandemic, this was the case for about 6.5 percent of citizens. During the pandemic, roughly 35 percent of services were not performed in various areas, and up to 50 percent in some areas, such as chronic diseases, a group of patients requiring ongoing specialized care. Neglect and delays also apply to acute services and surgeries.

The Polish Society of Cardiology reports that cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only reinforced these statistics. - In Poland, during the COVID-19 pandemic, cardiovascular mortality increased by nearly 17 percent. Currently, cardiac patients are the population most affected by the increase in the so-called "health debt" during the pandemic, emphasizes Prof. Przemysław Mitkowski.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact, low availability of new drugs and medical procedures. The main reasons for this are restrictions on the approval of a drug for reimbursement, limitations on reimbursement spending from the budget, and the long time that elapses from registration to reimbursement. The average time from registration to reimbursement of a drug varies from more than 2.1 years in the Czech Republic to 3.4 years in Poland.

The comparative study was conducted by Access Gap, which examined access to innovative drugs and diagnostic solutions for ten disease entities in 2020/2021 in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Three disease groups were studied: oncological, rare and chronic diseases (ovarian, lung, breast, prostate cancers, cystic fibrosis, acute myeloid leukemia, lymphomas, SMA, multiple sclerosis and diabetes). Eight indicators were analyzed, covering various aspects of patient access to treatment, including but not limited to: access to modern diagnostics and reimbursement for innovative therapies. The results indicate significant underdevelopment in all four countries. Access to drugs that can save lives and health could be broader. Even if the decision to fund therapies is positive, on average, just over 20 percent of potential patients have access to innovative therapies. This is hard to explain if there is an unused fund of 4 billion zlotys waiting, which was supposed to be directed to the purchase of drugs for children with rare diseases. Instead, the Minister of Finance abolished VAT exemptions for purchases of such drugs financed through public collections, following the end of the COVID pandemic.