Diabetes: target of installing 2500 automatic insulin pumps this year will not be met
The Association for the Protection of Diabetics of Portugal (APDP) revealed, this Wednesday, that the target of installing 2,500 automatic insulin pumps by the end of the year will not be met and insisted on the need to speed up the process.
The president of APDP, José Manuel Boavida, who was heard this Wednesday in the parliamentary Health committee, defended that the system should go through pharmacies, remembering that public tenders delay the entire process and lamented the current situation.
According to him, it is estimated that there are around 30 thousand people with type 1 diabetes and around half will want to have automatic pumps, stressing that “the competitions do not allow for any savings”.
He gave the example of the current situation – in which one of the competitors in the public tender to acquire the pumps filed a lawsuit in court, blocking access to the devices, according to news this Wednesday, Jornal de Notícias – to explain that not even the 2500 bombs planned to be installed by the end of this year will be possible to comply with.
“It was planned to reach 5000 people, but as the competition was only launched for 2500, it was only at the end of the year [de 2023] and we arrived at this ridiculous situation. Of the 2,500, 450 will be installed, most of them to replace end-of-life pumps for people who switched to old syringes and pens,” he explained.
Insisting on the need to speed up the entire process, the person in charge says that the association has asked to maintain the centers’ responsibility for placing bombs and to “give them sufficient qualifications”, an idea with which the Ministry of Health agreed.
But he recalled that he has encountered “a lot of resistance” on the part of SPMS and Infarmed in having a system “truly agile and capable of responding to the needs of these people, half of whom are children”.
He also said that “choosing by catalog” (instead of a public tender) would be another way to speed up the process, remembering that the British public health service used precisely this option.
He pointed to the experience already gained in the approximately 35 bomb placement centers spread across the country and stated: “massification will come in the coming years, as will the facilitation of bombs”.
As reported this Wednesday by JN, diabetes treatment centers are informing patients that they will not be able to install the new automatic insulin administration pumps on the scheduled dates because one of the competitors in the public tender has filed a lawsuit in court which blocked the access of hospitals belonging to the National Health Service and the Association for the Protection of Diabetics of Portugal to the pumps of the runner-up in lot 2 of the public tender.
This was yet another setback in a process that has seen delays, after in June Infarmed temporarily suspended the sale of insulin pumps from the Chinese company Medtrum, which had won lots 1 and 2 of the competition (around 2,000 out of a total of 2,442 pumps), due to a warning of increased risk of hypoglycemia made by a British association of diabetologists and some incidents recorded in Portugal.
After this, the treatment centers were able to access batch 3 (466 pumps), since, to unblock the impasse, they were authorized to turn to the competitor who came second in the first two batches (Vital Aire), explains JN.
The first lot to be unlocked was lot 2. However, according to JN, the competitor who had been excluded from the competition for exceeding the base value (Medtronic), went to court to stop the process, which gave rise to the current situation.
“Let’s hope that the SPMS [Serviços partilhados do Ministério da Saúde] challenge the situation and impose the right to health”, he said.
Questioned by deputies, José Manuel Boavida explained that patients were not without access to treatment, but had to do so using old and less practical systems (syringes and pens).
The person responsible also considered it essential to reactivate mandatory registration, explaining that the calculation of the number of patients is done by extrapolating the average insulin doses or by estimates.
The Portuguese Society of Diabetology (SPD) asks the “Minister of Health to reinforce her attention to the needs of people with diabetes” as this is a “suspension that directly affects people with type 1 diabetes”.
“SPD calls for a rapid resolution of this situation and recalls the need to standardize access to this vital technology for improving quality of life and reducing complications associated with diabetes”, reads a statement sent to newsrooms.
SPD says it was “surprised” by the suspension. “The SPD recalls that despite the political unanimity that recognizes the need for Portugal to overcome the delay compared to other European countries in accessing this technology and despite the budget availability for the acquisition of this equipment, the entire administrative process designed by the structures of the Ministry of Health has proven to be completely inadequate for the needs of people with diabetes and the clinical services that accompany them”.
Type 1 diabetes reduces life expectancy by 17 years when diagnosed in childhood.
