Panama: Minsa, Bio Materiales and the Registration Exception

What La Prensa published about Minsa and Bio Materiales

In Panama, the newspaper La Prensa reported on June 8, 2026 that Bio Materiales, S.A., a medical and dental supply company in which Health Minister Fernando Boyd Galindo was a shareholder for 28 years, takes part in purchases by the Ministry of Health (Minsa). The minister resigned from his posts at the company on June 13, 2024, and the resignation was entered in the Public Registry on June 18, twelve days before he took office¹. La Prensa then documented at least two purchases totaling US$1,212,000 between 2024 and 2026¹¹⁰.

On June 21, La Prensa's investigative unit (Rolando Rodríguez B.) added the medicines chapter. According to that report, on May 16, 2025 Boyd signed a resolution delegating to Minsa's secretary general the power to sign exceptional direct purchases of up to US$500,000, and the same day approved in writing the direct contracting of Bio Materiales through an "exceptional procedure": two purchases of US$199,967 and US$199,997, US$399,964 in total. The director of Medicines and Health Supplies, Eric Iván Conte, cited "urgencia evidente" (obvious urgency)².

The point that matters to physicians is regulatory. According to La Prensa, on July 25, 2025 the national director of Pharmacy and Drugs, Uriel Pérez, sent three letters to Bio Materiales' pharmacist-in-charge authorizing imports "por excepción al Registro Sanitario" of medicines bought from Indian laboratories that had no sanitary registration in Panama. The products were delivered on August 19, 2025². The paper puts the company's sales to Minsa under Boyd's tenure at about US$2.4 million².

On June 22, La Prensa published a second installment: four direct purchases of vitamin ACD formulations approved by Boyd at US$199,500 each (US$798,000 in total) and a US$805,000 tender for 2,300 dental handpieces in which Bio Materiales was the only bidder³. The paper says it sent questionnaires to Boyd and his former partner and had received no answer when those editions closed²³.

The registration exception in Law 419

Minsa explained that it applied Law 419 of 2024, which lets the DNFD authorize the import of medicines without sanitary registration when none are available locally⁴⁵. In the law's text as published on vLex, Article 45 ("Excepciones al registro sanitario") empowers the Health Authority to authorize imports without registration, on a technically reasoned request and in listed cases; one of them is: "Cuando no exista disponibilidad del medicamento en el mercado local para iniciar o continuar un tratamiento médico" (when the medicine is not available on the local market to start or continue a medical treatment)¹¹.

The same text sets conditions: the imported product "deberá contar con certificado de buenas prácticas de fabricación vigente" (must hold a current good-manufacturing-practice certificate; Article 46), and the exception's requirements include a "receta médica o carta de la institución requirente" (prescription or letter from the requesting institution; Article 47)¹¹. An opinion column from patient organizations adds that the law's centralized-negotiation mechanism "permite comprar sin registro sanitario en casos críticos" (allows buying without sanitary registration in critical cases)¹². Read the full articles in the Gaceta Oficial before citing them in a formal document.

How Boyd and Minsa respond

Minsa responded by press release on June 21: the purchases respond exclusively to the need to avoid shortages of essential products, covering clotrimazole 100 mg, nifedipine 10 mg, propranolol 40 mg and vitamin ACD formulations, and the lack of suppliers (27 public tenders void between 2018 and 2024) affected more than 150,000 patients. It added that imported products must meet technical, regulatory and sanitary requirements, and rejected any preferential treatment⁴⁵.

Boyd told TVN he has no current link to the company, that he sold his shares and left the board before taking office, and that this is documented with the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Information and the Superintendency of Non-Financial Subjects. He said he does not choose contractors, that direct purchases happen when a tender goes unanswered (he cited one drug tendered 27 times without success), and that he sent a letter to the Comptroller General asking for audits of his actions since July 1, 2024⁶. Weeks earlier, in statements reported by Panamá América and Crítica, he said "tuve que desprenderme de la compañía cuando tomé mi posición de ministro en el año 2024" (I had to part with the company when I took my post as minister in 2024) and that the company would keep bidding because "yo no puedo evitar ni decirle a mi exsocio que quiebre la compañía" (I cannot stop my former partner from going bankrupt)⁷⁸.

Some discrepancies remain unresolved in the sources. La Prensa notes that Boyd has not said what he did with his shares¹² and that it asked him, without reply, for his sworn declaration of interests³; Boyd maintains he sold and documented it. As of November 7, 2026 we found no Comptroller or Antai ruling on these purchases. Newsroom Panama covered the same case⁹ and Boyd's remark that his administration "covers up for no one"¹⁰.

What a private party must show versus what the State may do

Law 419 defines sanitary registration as the "autorización expedida por la Autoridad de Salud para la importación y/o comercialización de un producto farmacéutico" (authorization issued by the Health Authority for the import and/or marketing of a pharmaceutical product), after evaluation¹¹. To obtain it, the manufacturer or its representative files, through an attorney, an application with a dossier that includes power of attorney, a WHO-type product certificate, the qualitative and quantitative formula, monograph, analytical methods, safety and efficacy studies, stability studies, labeling, samples and proof of fee payment (Article 29)¹¹.

The correct legal reading is that the exception is not an informal shortcut but another pathway in the same law, with its own conditions. The public-policy reading, which is what fuels the debate, is different: when the State buys by exception from a supplier with prior ties to the authority, citizens and physicians expect traceability: who certified good manufacturing practices, what lot testing was done, why there was no online quotation, and how the product is monitored afterward. It is the same transparency standard debated for other products; we analyzed it in the registration double standard in aesthetics and in GLP-1s, registrations and prices in Panama.

Why the quality of imported medicines matters

Nothing in the sources indicates that the products delivered to Minsa are defective; neither the DNFD nor Minsa has issued a quality alert on them. Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines substandard products as those that "do not meet quality standards and specifications" and falsified products as those that "deliberately misrepresent their identity, composition or source," and notes that 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries failed quality control tests, suggesting they are substandard or falsified¹³. A systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA Network Open examined the prevalence and economic burden of the problem in those countries¹⁴. That is why post-import control (lot sampling, pharmacovigilance) is what sustains trust in any exception pathway, public or private.

This piece is journalism and regulatory analysis for physicians. It does not evaluate or recommend any clinical use.