Humanity Georgia: Better Products, Lower Prices
Humanity Georgia has entered the Georgian pharmaceutical market with ambitious plans and aims to offer a wide range of medicines in the near future. According to the company, at the first stage, they will be offering the most common consumption drugs in Georgia at the end of December.
The entrance of the new pharmaceutical company is positively assessed by specialists, doctors and politicians alike, who agree that it will contribute to competition on the country’s pharmaceutical market and increase access to medicines.
“Our company is young but our advantage is that the best specialists with great experience are in the company’s management,” said Andrey Kuzma, the Director of the company. “A large part of the company’s employees have a lot of experience working with world brands, like PFIZER. Humanity Georgia is a dynamically developing company and our goal here is to establish ourselves in the Georgian pharmaceutical business as a affordable, safe and quality product supplier.”
According to Kuzma, their products are certified by the manufacturer EU GMP as well as with serial control of the World Health Organization certified laboratory.
President of the Association of Pharmaceutical Companies, Irina Chelidze, who met with the Director of Humanity Georgia, said that the company represents a wide range of generic drugs on the Georgian market and mostly offers medicines produced in India.
“Today, there are several strong players on the Georgian pharmaceutical market and I think that it will be very difficult for them to compete with the new company,” Chelidze said. I believe that the new company should enter the market with just the right marketing moves. In general, the pharmaceutical market is a living process, constantly changing. It is natural that one player goes and another enters. Monopoly in Georgia is out of the question. And, as it is easy to start a business [here], all kinds of imports can be carried out.”
She also discussed the control on imported drugs in Georgia which are not properly checked. She suggests that the government establish a laboratory which will control imported medications, since the product identity is not confirmed in any way with the current registration.
She further stated that the distributors of medication is not transparent the law keeps it confidential.
“When a drug is not accompanied by a document which does confirms its authenticity, it means that we are not insured from questionable products,” Chelidze said. “In general, when we talk about drug effectiveness, the most important is bioequivalence. It does not have a great importance which the producing countries are; the important thing is to identify bioequivalence correctly. I believe that if the drug quality control tightens it will reflect on prices. Accordingly, access to medicines will increase.
JSC Humanity Georgia was founded by Austrian company Humanity Holding GmbH which will build a high-tech pharmaceutical factory in Tbilisi with the Partnership Fund. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs will actively participate in the project.
The European standard pharmaceutical drug manufacturing factory will be equipped with the latest technology, modern laboratory quality inspection, warehousing and other necessary infrastructure.
The factory, which will employ 300 people, including local and foreign specialists, will produce at least 800 types of medicine, both for local use and for export. A certain number of drugs will be imported by the company, which they plan to sell at reasonable prices in Georgia.
The agreement for the new USD 130 million project was signed between the Partnership Fund, Humanity Holding GmbH and project company Humanity Georgia.
The Company believes that importing safe and affordable medicines will guarantee a drop in prices on the Georgian pharmaceutical market averaging 30% or more.
Ana Akhalaia