The Announcement of the Minister of Health of June 27, 2019 on the list of reimbursed drugs, foodstuffs for particular nutritional uses and medical devices was published on July 1, 2019. Despite numerous appeals from patients, Poland will still remain the only EU country that does not reimburse enzyme replacement therapy for those suffering from Fabry disease. These are not the only shortcomings.
According to the Ministry of Health, the most important change is the inclusion in the reimbursement of two drugs for patients with refractory or relapsed multiple myeloma: Darzalex (daratumumab) and Kyprolis (carfilzomib) will be available to patients qualified for the program “Treatment of patients with refractory or relapsed multiple myeloma”.
Patients included in the “Treatment of non-small cell lung cancer” program also gained a new therapeutic option – Alecensa (alectinibum) was reimbursed as part of the first-line treatment and after failure of crizotinib therapy.
The drug Blincyto (blinatumomab) was entered on the reimbursement list in the drug program “Treatment of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia”. An important change also occurred in the drug program “Treatment of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia” – it consists in the possibility of discontinuation of nilotinib in patients who obtained a sustained deep molecular response during treatment with this inhibitor after previous treatment with imatinib, and it will also be possible to use a third tyrosine kinase inhibitor second generation (bosutinib) in case of intolerance to previous treatment in the program with two second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
At the beginning of July, the drug containing peginterferonum is also added to the reimbursement list, which in certain indications will be available for patients with polycythemia vera, patients with essential thrombocythemia, patients with primary and secondary myeloid fibrosis and pregnant women with chronic myeloid leukemia requiring cytoreductive treatment.
One of the important changes from the project published on June 21 is the return of cetuximab and bevacizumab to drug program B.4 (treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer).
However, the final list did not include a few drugs that patients were particularly interested in. The drug for Fabry’s disease, for which the sick has long appealed, will not be reimbursed (we wrote about the case here: 18 years are waiting for a life-saving drug – each subsequent month without treatment is like a death sentence). There is also no expected new 4/6 kinase inhibitor for patients with advanced breast cancer. Patients with diabetes in the new list of reimbursed drugs still do not find floins or incretins. Also, it was not possible to include on the list of new therapeutic options for patients with Crohn’s disease.
Source: Medexpress.pl