Ukrainian Medicines Resources for Healthcare Professionals

In order to help Ukrainian patients, the Southampton Medicines Advice Service have compiled a list of useful resources which we are grateful to be able to share:

• The International Pharmacy Federation (FIP) has produced a sheet of pictograms and translated Ukrainian, Polish, German and Russian captions for tablets, capsules, and common administration times.
• The Irish Pharmacy Union have compiled a list of questions and counselling points in Ukrainian with Cyrillic characters.
• Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference includes monographs for some overseas-licensed medicines describing their dosing, adverse effects and typical uses, as well as brand names for Ukrainian products. Healthcare professionals in Wales can access Martindale via the Micromedex Healthcare Series in the e-library for Health. Some institutions may also subscribe for access via medicinescomplete.com or have a paper copy. Martindale via medicinescomplete.com and the paper edition list the Cyrillic name for medicines in the Drug Nomenclature section at the top of each monograph, the rINNM (ru). Please note that the Martindale list of branded products is not exhaustive and the other resources below may help if a product is omitted.
• Ukrainian Summaries of Product Characteristics (SmPCs), including branded products, can be accessed via the DRLZ website. It is in Ukrainian but can be used with e.g. Google Translate to automatically translate to English. The “name”/”за назвою” search accepts brand names using Cyrillic characters, while the “INN”/”за МНН” field works using Latin or Cyrillic characters – for example, searching in the INN field for “tamsul” found valid results for tamsulosin. You will also need to make sure that the checkbox next to the appropriate line is selected when searching (if you type in a box, this will not automatically change). On the search results screen, click the UA/xxxxx/xx/xx number at the left-hand side to display the entry for a specific medicine, and on the resulting page “Instructions for medical use”/”Інструкція для медичного застосування” at the furthest bottom-right corner of the page will load an SmPC. Please be aware that while the website works in other web browsers such as Google Chrome, the SmPCs are displayed in the MHTML format, which will request to be saved instead of opening directly, and will only open in Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer does not usually auto-translate text, so sections will need to be copied into resources such as Google Translate. Alternatively, copy and paste the entire document into a Word file and upload this new document to Google Translate (it will not accept uploads of .mht files).
• The Ukrainian Medicines Compendium is similar to resources such as Drugs.com or Martindale as it provides summaries of information about medicines, intended for healthcare professionals. It is in Ukrainian and Russian but again can be used with translation websites. It includes Ukrainian proprietary products and brand names. The INN button in the blue bar displays an alphabetical list of medicines (using the Cyrillic alphabet) or the search box will work if you use the Cyrillic alphabet name for the drug (generic or branded). The English transliteration or translation will not work in the search box – for example Тамсулозин will find search results, but not tamsulosinum or tamsulosin. To find this for a drug where you only know the English spelling, Martindale’s drug monographs include a Drug Nomenclature section, which lists an rINNM (ru).
• The Ukrainian Medicine Conversion to European Equivalent Rx Product website may also help, but please read the disclaimer before using the site. Click on the UK flag or use the drop-down menu to select the UK, and then enter the brand name of the Ukrainian medicine or the INN in the search boxes.

Please be aware when using Google Translate or other machine translation that this may not be fully reliable – consider using a second source where available.

Adapted from the Medicines Learning Portal. © Southampton Medicines Advice Service