Hormonal drugs can now only be bought under the counter and for double the price

They can order the right drug at exorbitant prices, but without a guarantee that it is not a fake.

Yekaterina Maksimova

Since July-August, "Divigel" and "Estrogel" did not appear in pharmacies. "Proginova" sometimes goes on sale, but the imported "Divigel" and "Estrogel" seem to have completely disappeared. And the predictions that they would return to Russia did not come true.

Novye Izvestia reported that all three drugs were brought in for the last time in April-June of this year. The rest of the drugs were sold in early August. At the same time, the manufacturer of the drug Divigel (Orion Pharma) temporarily suspended deliveries to Russia due to sanctions. And it was assumed that by the fall they would be resumed.

But it didn't happen. In pharmacy retail, pharmacists do not even use the database when customers ask for Divigel and Estrogel. They automatically answer: “No, not for a long time.” It is also useless to search for hormones through the services for ordering medicines "EApteka" and "Apteka.ru", the aggregator only offers to click the "report on receipt" button.

Against the backdrop of this situation, TG channels have appeared in Russia that offer services for the delivery of disappeared drugs.

“According to the doctor's prescription, I need to take a 14-day course of using Divigel every month. You can't miss. Personal stocks of the drug ended in July and since then I have been looking for it wherever possible. Missed two treatment cycles. Then I accidentally found out that there are private TG channels where you can order hormonal drugs that have disappeared in Russia. The price more than doubled, but I still bought Divigel,” Anastasia, a subscriber of one of these secret channels", - told Novye Izvestiya.

A few more Muscovites, who are now forced to buy hormones from under the counter, shared how the purchase takes place. “I was told that there is some kind of organization. They place information about the availability of drugs in the tg-channel. A phone number is specified, but the caller must be subscribed to this channel and the operator will require a login. This is the only way to place an order”, - said Alexandra P.

Another interlocutor of Novye Izvestia added: “I ordered three packages of Divigel through some intermediaries (unfortunately, their phone number has not been preserved). They were brought to me by a courier. He did not provide any documents, did not ask to sign anywhere. I asked who you were, they answered me that it was just a courier and did not know the sender. They only accept cash, no cards or bank transfers. The drug "Divigel" is produced in Finland, but on the packs brought to me everything is written in Czech, instructions for use are also exclusively in Czech. There is a QR code, but it does not open. Back in the summer, I would have paid less than 5 thousand rubles for these three packs in our pharmacy, but now the drug has cost me almost 10 thousand. And I don't even know if it's a fake. I bought at my own risk, there is no other way. Then I looked again and saw that Divigel with a dosage of 0.5 in one of their tg-channels had risen in price to 5300 rubles. This is almost 200% more expensive than summer prices”, - shared the customer.

There are not so many Telegram channels that have become the only delivery point for hormonal drugs. One of them recently reported on the arrival of Divigel in dosages of 0.5-1.0-1.5 g. “Wholesale shipments from Saransk. Retail shipment across the Russian Federation (Post. SDEK),” the channel reports. It also confirms the presence of "Estorgel" in different dosages.

In another such channel, an announcement was posted on the search for dealers from the regions of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. In addition to the above-mentioned hormones, dealers are offered to sell anticancer drugs Lynparza at a price of 150 thousand rubles and Tagrisso for 287 thousand rubles. All correspondence - only through personal messages. One of the recipients corresponds under the nickname "Help of Medicine". And to clarifying questions - who, from where and how delivers drugs to Russia, who can give a guarantee of quality, the "helper" did not answer. And the message was blocked.

“It is, of course, a stalemate when patients cannot buy hormones. I do it quite often. Some of the patients talked about the emergence of a black market for hormonal drugs. Personally, I would advise you to be very careful with such proposals, even though the situation is hopeless”, - a gynecologist from one of the large private clinics in Moscow shared her opinion.

Svetlana Mishina, gynecologist, endocrinologist, CMH of the Grand Clinic network of immunorehabilitation and preventive medicine clinics, noted that transdermal Divigel and Estrogel are most often used in hormone replacement therapy. And for the IVF procedure, tablet preparations are used, which are available in pharmacies. And clinics of reproductive medicine are still coping.

“In the IVF procedure, estrogens and estradiol are used separately. They are in tablets. But they are not used for hormone replacement therapy. IVF and substitution therapy are different areas, they solve different problems and different drugs are used to solve them”, - said Svetlana Mishina.

Earlier, the scientific director of the same clinic, Olga Shuppo, also noted the difficult situation with hormonal drugs. “Most of the drugs that are on the market are foreign-made. And there are no transdermal modern Russian forms of hormones”, - Olga Shuppo emphasized.