China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) is to open a children’s drug and medical device dispatching center next month, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Wednesday.
The hospital was chosen to operate the center after a council was formed to address the scarcity of essential medicine and medical devices for children, such as heart stents, engineered artificial blood vessels, surgical electrode pads or artificial kidneys, which are sometimes difficult to acquire, short of supply or not funded by the National Health Insurance system, Chen said at a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) formed the “children clinical essential medicine and medical device specialist council” in June to decide on five essential medicines and 36 types of medical device as priority items, and to establish a dispatching center.
The ministry last month called for proposals from healthcare facilities that were willing to operate a centralized procurement and emergency dispatch center, and coordinate the supply of children’s essential medicine and medical devices that are difficult to acquire, as well as improving the application process to import supplies.
Currently medical practitioners must contact other hospitals to search for needed medical devices or apply to the Food and Drug Administration to specially import an item, MOHW Department of Medical Affairs Director-General Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said.
The specialist council has listed the essential items that are often short in supply and would reference the used quantity of these items in the past three years, and CMUH would collect reports from healthcare facilities on the needed items, then import and dispatch them to the facilities, he said.
Once the center begins operations, medical practitioners can contact the hospital for the children’s drugs and medical devices they require, he added.
Additional reporting by CNA
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