The Open Institute of Public Health says that the level of Ukraine's medications market transparency is rather low.

The Institute expressed this opinion in the results of a study, which were presented during a press conference at the Ukrainian News press center.

According to the findings, the problems of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market are: the system of tender purchases, corrupt patterns in the sale of medications, non-ethical marketing of medications.

Under the study outcome, in the past six years, costs on health protection in Ukraine rose four fold, the use of medications grew three fold, and mortality rose by 2% in absolute count.

Referring to the RMBC Ukraine company, the Institute says that last year retail sales accounted for 88% of Ukraine's pharmaceutical market, and hospital sales for 12%; prescribed medications accounted for 59% and non-prescribed for 41% of the sales; innovational medications made 12%, and generic medications (produced under the developer's license) 88% of the sales.

The study demonstrated that 4,758 generic medications need determination of their biological equivalence.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has just three bio-analytical laboratories, and neither of them has a GLP certificate.

As Ukrainian News reported, in 2007 the volume of drug store sales in Ukraine grew by 32.54% or by USD 0.41 billion up to USD 1.67 billion in wholesale prices compared to 2006.

The Cabinet of Ministers decided to extend UAH 32.1 billion for health protection in 2008.

The GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) standard is a system of norms, rules and instructions aimed at providing coordination and trustworthiness of laboratory study results.