Pharmaceutical industry representative requests that incorporation of cannabidiol in SUS not be tied to specific concentration
Abiquifi's objective with the suggestion sent to the Ministry of Health is to ensure that the incorporation of cannabidiol in SUS occurs broadly, allowing new products that are in the registration phase at Anvisa to also be accessed via the system
Published on 06/07/2026
Charles Vilela
The incorporation of the medication cannabidiol 200mg/ml into SUS (Unified Health System) will be on the agenda of the 93rd meeting of Conitec (National Commission for the Incorporation of Technologies in SUS), which will take place on December 8 and 9. The mention of a specific concentration in the derivative of Cannabis sativa in the medication prompted the Brazilian Association of Pharmaceutical Inputs Industry (Abiquifi) - an entity with 44 member companies, eight of them directly working on the medicinal Cannabis topic - to send a letter to the Ministry of Health requesting that the inclusion of cannabidiol in SUS not be linked to a specific concentration of the product, but only to its active ingredient.
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The objective of the document delivered yesterday (30) by Abiquifi to the Secretariat of Science, Technology, and Strategic Inputs of the agency is to ensure that the incorporation of cannabidiol in SUS occurs broadly and not only in relation to a specific concentration.
If only the incorporation of cannabidiol in the concentration of 200mg/ml is approved, only one product available on the market can be acquired by SUS, from the Prati-Donaduzzi brand. “We believe that the inclusion (of cannabidiol in SUS) should be done without being tied to a specific concentration: let it be cannabidiol, not necessarily cannabidiol 200 mg/ml,” defends the coordinator of the Cannabis Inputs working group of the entity, Carolina Sellani. “In this way, other products, with different concentrations, could also be incorporated into SUS. It would be a way to make it (the incorporation) broader.”
The cannabidiol from the Prati-Donaduzzi brand is the first and currently the only Brazilian product based on cannabis authorized by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). However, six companies have requests for registrations of cannabidiol-based medications pending at the agency. By linking the incorporation of cannabidiol into SUS only to a specific concentration of the product, in this case, 200mg/ml, new formulations that may be approved by Anvisa, and therefore obtain government authorization for commercialization, could not be used in SUS if the agenda that the Ministry will be submitting for analysis by Conitec next week is approved. In addition, the concentration of cannabidiol depends on the therapeutic indication, which may vary according to the patient and the disease that needs to be treated. Thus, providing the product with a single concentration could limit access to treatment.
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The request to be discussed in the committee is for the incorporation of “cannabidiol 200mg/ml for the treatment of refractory epilepsies in children and adolescents to conventional treatments.” However, on October 23, the Ministry of Health had already signed an agreement with the company Prati, Donaduzzi & Cia Ltda for the transfer of technology and supply of the product with the same concentration as what will be discussed in Conitec, the Cannabidiol 200mg/ml. The contract establishes the supply of the “medication or product based on medicinal marijuana.” It will be up to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, through the Institute of Drug Technology (Farmanguinhos), to operationalize the contract, which, according to the agency, is confidential.
