Mexico will stop resorting to UNOPS for the purchase of medicines, announces INSABI

The federal government will no longer require the services of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which it had contracted to make the consolidated purchases of medicines in conjunction with the Institute of Health for Welfare (Insabi), he said.

This Wednesday, the head of a said institution, Juan Ferrer.

In an appearance before the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, Ferrer assured: “We are no longer going to require the services of UNOPS; why? Because today we have the support of the Ministry of Finance, the IMSS, the ISSSTE, the Navy, the Ministry of National Defense, of the 23 states.”

Ferrer insisted that the entire health sector is already integrated. “We required it (from UNOPS) when the market was most convulsed, and we needed international suppliers; today, we are already following those contracts.”

The director of Insabi assured that medicines for 2023 and 2024 are already being purchased and that the authorities have deleted from the National Compendium of Health Supplies 1,200 codes for drugs that were in the catalog and are no longer even manufactured in the world.

It was in 2019 that a framework agreement was signed so that UNOPS could help purchase medicines from the Mexican government. In 2021, the federal government commissioned the first purchase of drugs.

However, UNOPS could not complete the entire purchase. In February of that year, Insabi sent a letter asking health institutions and hospitals to go out and buy the medicines they needed. In turn, this triggered direct awards. In November 2021, Insabi published the call for an international public tender to acquire 564 codes for medicines and therapeutic goods by 2022 without UNOPS.

Insabi was asked why it did not go with UNOPS in that tender, and the answer was that, since the purchase corresponding to 2021, UNOPS undertook to acquire some medicines and not others, as was the case with most of the drugs. Oncology, which the institute itself would handle. The purchase of which Insabi did go with UNOPS in 2021 included 360 medicine keys and 274 healing materials.

Regarding the problems faced for the distribution of medicines and that they reach the patients, Ferrer affirmed that the Insabi was delivering the medication in the state warehouses. Still, it was not covering the last mile, which has already been corrected.

“There are already 17 states that have accepted this new distribution with the last mile (in which the Insabi and the Army participate). With this last mile, the Federation absorbs the cost of it, and the states do not pay it,” he said.