(PM) Berlin, 05.03.2012 - The volume of medicine retail sales on the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine grew by 17%, up to 2,5 billion USD in 2011. It doesn’t even include the hospital market.

According to the head of Ukrainian State Service on medications (Gosleksluzhba) Alexei Solovyov, compared to 2010 8% more medicine items were sold to pharmaceutical and medical institutions. However the real growth of 17% comes again from premium medicines sold – mostly imported from Western countries.Solovyev also highlighted that almost 65% of all medicine units sold in Ukraine have been manufactured there. However according to other experts, 80-90% of all pharmaceuticals and OTCs in value terms were imported, in particular from Europe and the US. Besides, the number of pharmacies in Ukraine increased by 9.3% (up to 14.349 thousand outlets), the number of kiosks pharmacies decreased by 40.8% (to 2.130 thousand).

Chameleon Pharma Consulting comments: It might be a good idea to close those small kiosk pharmacies from the old times. Many of them were used to sell copy products or sometimes expired products. We are sure that the closure of the Pharmacy kiosks would increase the quality of medicine in Ukraine.