State measures to ensure the availability of penicillin in the USSR over the second half of the 1940s

Abstract

Based on the analysis of declassified documents of the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of Economics, the article considers the issue of measures taken by the USSR government in the second half of the 1940s to ensure economic and physical accessibility for the population of the country of a new drug — penicillin. The author provides information on the number of enterprises that produced antibiotics in the USSR during this period, the total volume of their production. It is shown that the capacity of domestic enterprises for a long time did not allow covering the calculated healthcare need for the drug, which determined its acute shortage. The article considers the process of pricing and government regulation of the price of a domestic drug. Based on a comparison of the cost of penicillin therapy and the income level of the population, it was concluded that the drug was affordable for the country’s residents by the end of the 1940s — beginning of the 1950s. In the conditions of an acute shortage of penicillin in the USSR in 1947, a system of centralized distribution of an antibiotic, paid for from the state budget, was introduced in medical institutions of the country. The Ministry of Health of the USSR developed a special distribution coefficient that determined the share of a particular republic in the total volume of drug supplies. The same principle was also translated to subsequent levels of distribution: by regions and cities. The article reflects the problems that accompanied the process of managing drug turnover within the country. The author showed that the introduction of penicillin into wide clinical practice, accompanied by state support measures, even despite the continued shortage of the drug, quickly and positively affected the health of the population of the USSR.