Macedonian Health Minister Nikola Todorov presented the latest legal changes to the rules for emergency import of medicine, online shopping, use of traditional medicine and the regulation of the role of the Drug Agency.

"The changes allow us to increase the level of quality in the production and quality control of medicine, to strengthen the mechanism of control and to define the Agency as the regulatory body that will care about the safety and quality of all medicine used in Macedonia", Minister Todorov said.

Todorov added that a major part of the changes introduced in the past years, in the system of price control, provided that wholesale prices are set by comparing the prices in 12 countries. "This has allowed us to lower the prices of 4.500 drugs in seven instances since February 2012. This has translated into savings in the healthcare system, and the funds that were saved were reinvested for other purposes", Todorov said.

The Minister also said that the changes initiated in the past years, under a German model of subsidiary pharmacies, allowed smaller, less profitable rural pharmacies to align with more companies in more prosperous parts of the country. This allowed greater availability of drugs across the country.