2024-01-30 05:01:00
Without a clear direction and without a fixed leader at the head, the National Institute for Food and Drug Surveillance (Invima) continues in the national government. It has been under interim directors for a year and four months, with several alerts due to drug shortages in tow and, in addition, asking for more budget.
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Invima is the entity in the Government’s health sector responsible for ensuring that everything from medicines and medical devices to food, beverages, cosmetics, hygiene products and pesticides flow in the country. Not because it manufactures them, but because it is responsible for checking that these products are safe, effective and of quality.
It is a titanic task that requires human and technical resources so that the circulation of these items is efficient and that every time someone needs them they can find them without looking around so much.
But, Invima has not had a head to guide that mission since September 19, 2022 when they accepted the resignation of Julio César Aldana, who was the head in the government of former president Iván Duque. And although in October 2023, Petro appointed the former director of medicines at the World Health Organization, Germán Velásquez, the latter rejected his appointment, in part, because it was never formalized beyond the president’s announcement in X (formerly Twitter ).
Since then, there have been four interim directors: Francisco Rossi, who left in March 2023 after saying that former Health Minister Carolina Corcho rejected containers from foreign companies to address the shortage of medicines; Mariela Pardo, who was general secretary of the Institute; the economist Juan Carlos Arias Escobar, whose photo and profile are still on the Invima page; and now there is Yenny Pereira Oviedo, who was an advisor to the Superintendency of Health and the MinSalud.
The consultant on Health policies at the World Bank, Leonardo Arregocés, notes, regarding this panorama, that the entity came with a “huge increase in pending procedures and with a thousand problems, but this government arrived and we found that everything could be worse, because Invima needs dynamics due to the number of products wanting to enter the market, and for that it needs money, technical people and leadership.”
Despite this lack of firm direction, so far in the Petro Government, Invima has signed 1,658 contracts totaling $123,544 million. A number that almost triples those that were signed in the same period of the previous government, with 568 that totaled $63,210 million (195% less than those of the current administration). In fact, the money in contracts in this year and a half is half of what was spent ($243,021 million) last four years.
And to add more vinegar to the soup, 2024 looks complex with the judicial and disciplinary authorities keeping track of the medicine shortage crisis and with a backlog in the procedures. According to the latest Invima supply and shortage list, there are 25 medications in short supply (including for erectile dysfunction, cancer and multiple sclerosis) and 17 at risk of being so.
Likewise, there are 18,913 procedures backed up by 2023. And so far this year, 111 requests for new health records have arrived at Invima.
“There is a latent risk. Not having a director who knows how this crisis is being handled and who does not know where they are going, means that there is no clear direction to know where the necessary resources are going to come from and which leads to the morale of the people who He works wherever he is on the floor,” adds Arregocés.
Precisely about those resources, the director (e), Yenny Pereira, referred this week in Congress: “Invima should go from $157,000 million to $407,000 million. “That is our estimate to be able to generate capabilities.”
For this, Arregocés notes, a firm director is pertinent to “meet with the ministries of Finance and Health to see how those missing resources are collected so that they can operate in a better way.”
Invima remains an orphan and is a reflection of the way in which the Government is managing this sector, which directly impacts the lives of citizens. The saying goes well that “you don’t play with your health.”
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