The Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices MALMED is starting an inspection on what kind of devices for measuring glycemia the diabetics in the country receive since yesterday, after they complained that they are not in the original packaging, but in nylon bags. This information about the "Free Press" confirmed it the director of MALMED Lirim Shabani.

The Union of Associations of Diabetics, headed by President Dime Velev, demand that the Ministry of Health immediately terminate the tender for blood sugar measuring devices and that the diabetes management system in the country be changed immediately.

- We demand that the contract be terminated as a matter of urgency and that a reference price be introduced and that we all choose within that reference price what devices we will buy, following the example of neighboring countries. If the device is more expensive, let us pay extra, if it is not, we will not pay extra, but we need to have a choice. These devices for measuring sugar, which have started to be distributed to us these days, are suspicious, the president of the Union of Diabetic Associations, Dime Velev, told "Sloboden Pechat".

He added that this week they will have a meeting with the National Diabetes Commission and they will officially request that the contract with the supplier of the devices be terminated and that the reference price be introduced, that is, in the simplest terms, that every diabetic should have a certain budget available and use it to buy a device in pharmacies.

- The silence of the institutions is very symptomatic. Those of us with severed legs, pre-infarction conditions and various other complications do not need justice after three years. What is being done is not right. And I especially want to emphasize that we will not allow various elements to create and invent a non-existent quarrel between patients and doctors on an inter-ethnic basis. The device that was assigned to us, already in 2017 and in 2019, we proved to them that it is not a reference. Then they changed it, but here in 2023 they returned that old device for measuring sugar and they give it to us in nylons, in which drugs and tablets are divided, without any markings, only MK 23 is written. We are so underestimated and trampled on, and what is being done with the people's money from the budget? Glucometers bought by the kilo and the institutions to keep quiet, added Velev.

Diabetics have been facing a disastrous management of their health condition for ten months thanks to the fact that the tender for the supply of tapes and glucometers was announced late by the Ministry of Health. But after insulin pharmacies began to distribute the devices and strips, diabetics noticed that the packages were inadequate and not original. Previously, they sent petitions to the Ombudsman to take them under protection, because for months the state has not provided them with devices for managing diabetes, not even strips for measuring blood glucose, which is dangerous for their lives. Also, Velev claims, the amount of distributed tapes is small and discriminatory.

- People with type 1 diabetes go to one pharmacy, and people with type 2 go to another. We are shocked by how patients in a public health facility are given glucometers that are not in the original packaging, without a declaration, in a plastic bag, there is no expiration date. there is no guarantee, so there is no hygienic pen for pricking. A number of tapes have appeared in some kind of strange packaging and not in the original packaging. They have a declaration printed here only in the Macedonian language. Some of the patients say that there is not even a box, but the strips are just put inside like that, in a bundle. They made total chaos and underestimation, Velev told "Sloboden Pechat".

The Ministry of Health is silent on our questions about what happens to the purchased strips and glucometers.