(PM) Berlin, 02.03.2012 - The crisis has gone and the CIS or CEE healthcare markets develop well. No other place on earth does show sales growth numbers of more than 15%. If we compare countries like Russia and Ukraine with France and the UK in terms of number of inhabitants , those markets in the CIS or CEE can only double every five years. And this has happened in many countries in the past decades.The reimbursement market is still underdeveloped in the Eastern Region, most of the drugs and OTC are paid out of pocket. The out-of-pocket-market in the leading CIS countries amounts to almost 80% of the total healthcare market. This brings us to the following market characteristics:

• Almost 50% of the healthcare market is taken by the growing OTC segment. Russian consumers have learned to take care of their health and thus to buy preventive OTC medicines.

• Big Rx. indication groups in western countries are still underdeveloped in the CIS, sometimes because of the lack of the same level of reimbursement like in western countries.

• Many innovative OTC and medicine segments are missing innovative products.

Even then consumers are willing to pay the extra price for a better quality medicine from the “West”.

The Russian healthcare market clearly offers the biggest potential in the whole region. However it is ranked after Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey in terms of future growth potential in percent of total healthcare growth. Chameleon Pharma Consulting believes that the current healthcare “reforms” will help the country to get access to a better healthcare knowhow in the long run.

Chameleon Pharma Consulting comments: As it is shown in the diagram above, it is interesting to understand the growth potential on the CEE-CIS markets. Most of the healthcare markets are young and still small, compared to the number of inhabitants.

Russia has about 130 million inhabitants, but the Pharma market has not even reached 30% of a german market size. In summary, it is absolutely logic that CIS healthcare market should double in size every five years.