Russia will develop the domestic pharmaceutical industry in order to decrease the country's dependency on foreign medicines, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
"[Russia's] pharmaceutical market has been flooded by [foreign] medicines. These medicines have actually destroyed our own market, and our [pharmaceutical] business has started to collapse," the president said during a meeting with university students in the West Siberian city of Tomsk.
Medvedev said the government's priority was to "allocate money to our pharmaceutical industry" and to create an environment which would allow the establishment of "modern advanced enterprises" producing "modern medicines."
He said a list of 500 medicines that should be produced in Russia has been developed by Russian medical specialists.
"We should assure the country's independence from [foreign] medicines," the president said, adding that some expensive and rare medicines could still be imported to Russia.
TOMSK, February 11 (RIA Novosti)