BAMPTD with Prestigious PR Prize 2025
BAMPTD CEO Boryana Marinkova received the Second Prize in the Crisis Communications category at the 25th edition of the prestigious PR Prize 2025. "I thank the jury for their vote and the support of the Bulgarian PR Guild, as well as BAMPTD for believing in my ideas and full dedication to the public interest and providing pharmaceutical products for Bulgarian patients," Marinkova said after the ceremony.
She added that in Bulgaria there is an attitude that there is a shortage of medicines due to parallel export. The largest study of 22,487 cases of shortages in the EU in 2021 shows that 51% are due to production problems, 25% - to cases with the commercial interest of companies. The BAMPTD platform in the period 2019-2024 collects 1800 signals for missing medicines. Of these, nearly 60% are available in pharmacies, over 30% are due to temporarily or permanently suspended sales, and 10% are for hospital and not authorized medicinal products in our country.
She added that in Bulgaria there is an attitude that there is a shortage of medicines due to parallel export. The largest study of 22,487 cases of shortages in the EU in 2021 shows that 51% are due to production problems, 25% - to cases with the commercial interest of companies. The BAMPTD platform in the period 2019-2024 collects 1800 signals for missing medicines. Of these, nearly 60% are available in pharmacies, over 30% are due to temporarily or permanently suspended sales, and 10% are for hospital and not authorized medicinal products in our country.
Over 2500 signals have been received in 12 months of the Find Your Medicine application. In 66% of cases, the two associations have helped to find the signaled medicinal products in the locality where they are sought. 12% of the signals are due to permanently suspended supplies, and 14% to temporarily suspended sales. 6% of patients have signaled for unregistered medicines, and 2% have searched for hospital products that are not dispensed in pharmacies. 94% of the signals were submitted by patients. In the remaining cases, the application has been contacted by doctors, patient organizations and the media.
The project aims to prove that parallel distribution is not a source of shortages, but is part of the solution through contributions to patients and additional imports, as well as patient support, education and protection from malicious practices and self-medication. The first and widest audience of crisis communications is patients and their relatives, who can signal missing medicines. The second specialized audience is doctors and pharmacists, and the third is institutions.
The project aims to prove that parallel distribution is not a source of shortages, but is part of the solution through contributions to patients and additional imports, as well as patient support, education and protection from malicious practices and self-medication. The first and widest audience of crisis communications is patients and their relatives, who can signal missing medicines. The second specialized audience is doctors and pharmacists, and the third is institutions.
An interesting fact is that in the last two months we have registered a decrease in the fear of shortages among patients and currently our signals only refer to objective shortages, of which the authorities and the public have been notified in advance.
