Memorial’s lawyer is awarding medicines worth millions of rubles for children with rare diseases. In response, the authorities recognized his mother as an “foreign agent”

“This is a unique practice,” says the lawyer. – In my court decisions it is said: “To oblige the child to give medicine in the amount indicated here.” A year has passed, the quantity has changed, and the child will receive more, and will be given until the need for the medicine disappears. It may be a year, two, 10-20 years, but we mainly work with children with severe disabilities, and they need to take medications for years. Basically, this is a lifelong admission, so we cannot indicate a specific amount in the claims, because we would have to reapply later. “

The main argument in the claims is the fact that medications prescribed for health reasons should be prescribed free of charge by virtue of Art. 80 of the Law “On the Fundamentals of Health Protection of Citizens of the Russian Federation”. Unregistered medicines can only be prescribed by a council of federal specialized medical organizations. In the case of registered drugs, the basis for the claim is the same. Often these drugs are not given due to their high cost.

“The ministries of health, let’s say, do not want to spend money and consider it inexpedient to spend on one child,” says Ivanov. – I talked with lawyers who say: “You understand how much good can be done for 60 million rubles a year?”

The Ministry of Health should be responsible for the allocation of funds for the purchase of rare drugs, but regional ministries do not seek to squeeze the necessary funding from local governments at the beginning of the fiscal year. In addition, it can be risky to allocate money for expensive drugs even for the treatment of children – the authorities, supervisory and law enforcement agencies may not understand such expenses.

“Sometimes they don’t want to, sometimes they are mistaken, and sometimes they hide themselves,” says Ivanov. – The interpretation of the law is a specific thing. It happened that the Ministry of Health of some regional gave the child an expensive foreign medicine, the prosecutor’s office comes with a check, the Accounts Chamber, but they do not really understand and just see that it is an unregistered medicine ”.

Checks can result in criminal cases related to misappropriation of funds.