President urges health minister to find support solutions for diabetes and cancer patients

RIGA - After a meeting with Health Minister Hosams Abu Meri (New Unity) on Monday, President Edgars Rinkevics called on the health minister to work with organizations representing the sector to find support solutions for type 1 diabetes and cancer patients.

As the president's spokesman Martins Dregeris told LETA after the meeting, the officials discussed the system of state-funded medicines and medical devices, as well as ways to improve the transparency of the system and expand support to patients.

After the meeting, Rinkevics said that the system of state-funded medicines has changed in recent years - the procedure for prescribing medicines has been changed, additional instruments have been provided to support patients, and budget funding allocated to cover the costs of state-funded medicines has increased significantly.

"Every resident of Latvia is important, so we need to listen to those patient groups and the medical professionals who treat them, whose needs have not been heard so far," the president said.

During the meeting, Abu Meri briefed Rinkevics about the progress made in identifying all the challenges facing the health sector in order to prepare priority actions for 2027-2030.

Abu Meri agreed with Rinkevics that significant work has been done in the field of state-funded medicines, but the transparency of the system needs to be further improved and support for patients needs to be expanded in a targeted way, Oskars Sneiders, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, told LETA after the meeting.

Abu Meri stressed that as health minister, "all patients are important to him", while decisions must be fair, medically sound and aimed at the greatest benefit for society as a whole.

The minister noted that already this year, the Health Ministry will look for possibilities to provide glucose monitoring sensors at least for critical patient groups, while at the same time advancing a proposal for a 75 percent reimbursement for these sensors for all diabetic patients and insulin pumps for defined patient groups in the 2027 budget.

Abu Meri explained that difficult decisions have to be taken in the circumstances of a limited budget, which is also a tough task, but it is the ministry's obligation is to ensure that these decisions are "medically sound and fair to all patients".

As reported, a task force set up to assess compensation for medical devices necessary for diabetic patients has agreed in principle on setting the compensation for monitoring sensors at 75 percent for patients from the age of 18, the Health Ministry informed LETA.

The ministry explains that the aim of the task force is to evaluate and improve the approach to compensating the cost of medical devices for diabetic patients, with a particular focus on the provision of continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps.

The first meeting of the task force took place this week, where its members examined a number of proposals that the National Health Service had prepared for consideration by Saeima, as well as discussed the range of reimbursable healthcare services and the need for objective and comparable criteria to identify priority patient groups.

The task force also discussed several scenarios to extend access to reimbursable continuous glucose monitors.

The task force supported in principle the National Health Service's proposal that the state should cover 75 percent of the cost of continuous glucose monitors for patients aged 18 and older. According to the Health Ministry, this would require allocating an additional EUR 3.63 million from the 2027 state budget. The task force also agreed to work on an alternative solution, identifying priority patient groups in case additional funding is not allocated in full.

As for compensation for insulin pumps, the task force agreed that clear clinical criteria would be developed on the basis of recommendations provided by the Latvian Association of Endocrinologists. It is estimated that under optimal conditions, the state could provide insulin pump therapy to around 100-200 patients annually. In 2027, providing insulin pumps to 100 additional patients would cost EUR 1.65 million, according to estimates.

According to the Health Ministry, the task force will continue to work on refining the criteria, priorities and funding scenarios so that the Health Ministry could prepare a balanced and sustainable proposal to improve compensation mechanism for medical devices for patients with diabetes.

Currently, continuous glucose monitors are provided to certain groups of patients: children under 18 years of age, pregnant and post-natal patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes receiving insulin therapy, patients after organ transplantation, and patients after pancreatic resection.

The cost of insulin pumps is covered by the state for patients with diabetes up to the age of 24.