Middle East Desk Report
BEIRUT: Over the past month, Rasha Kabalan has been trying to find her father’s Parkinson’s medicine by searching in hospitals in Beirut and south Lebanon in vain.
“I was hoping to find a box of my father’s drug until I manage to travel and buy it from Turkey or Egypt,” Kabalan told Xinhua while adding that she has even asked friends in different areas of the country to search in nearby pharmacies but they could not find it either. Kabalan is not alone facing such a problem. A patient who was infected with COVID-19 said after he returned home from hospital he could not find the prescribed medicines to continue his treatment at home.
The patient, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that he had to return to the hospital to ask the hospital’s pharmacy to provide him with the needed medicines. “The hospital’s pharmacy contacted the administration and they sold me the needed drugs after negotiations,” he said. The COVID-19 patient was lucky to have found his prescribed drugs as many of the hospitals in Lebanon are struggling to secure the needed medicines for the COVID-19 patients and people suffering from other diseases. Drugs for illness from Parkinson, to Cholesterol, Diabetes, blood pressure and medicines used in COVID-19 treatment have been in shortage around Lebanon.
The medicine crisis emerged amid the shortage in U.S. dollars in the country as the central bank’s foreign reserves were depleted prompting Banque Du Liban to announce its decision to reduce its subsidies on medicines which created panic among citizens who feared an increase in prices of drugs. Ghassan al-Amin, head of the Pharmacist Syndicate, told Xinhua the crisis was caused by panic buying from people who feared an increase in prices of drugs. “People cannot be blamed for that, they fear an increase in prices amid the current economic crisis,” al-Amin said.
The shortage in medicines used for cases other than COVID-19 may be replaced by generic drugs in some cases. However, hospitals’ pharmacists interviewed by Xinhua report a dire situation at hospitals when it comes to COVID-19 medicines.
“We are facing huge problems when it comes to COVID-19 drugs which is forcing us to resort to the black market to secure our needs of medicines for our patients,” Christian Sawma, Chief Pharmacist at LAU Medical Center-Rizk Hospital, told Xinhua. Sawma explained that some hospitals are suffering from a lack in COVID-19 medicines because product suppliers are asking for U.S. dollars which is not available amid the current financial crisis.
Meanwhile, Rana el-Ali, Chief Pharmacist at the Middle East Institute of health Hospital and President of the hospital pharmacists committee in Lebanon, attributed this crisis to the central bank’s slow mechanism of opening letters of credits for suppliers to import medicines. El-Ali also urged authorities to lift subsidies on medicines which would allow private companies and suppliers to buy the much-needed medicines without delays and then associations in the country would give financial support for people to buy their drugs.
“We have been suffering from a lack in very essential medicines for COVID-19 and other drugs for almost a year now,” she said.
For his part, el-Amin told Xinhua that he has submitted a request to the central bank of Lebanon to accelerate the process of opening letters of credits for suppliers. “I gave the central bank a list of urgent medicines, but I believe the process won’t be done until Banque Du Liban decides whether it will remove the subsidies on medicines or not,” he said. Joe Salloum, owner of Santa Maria Pharmacy, said the shortage in medicines is caused by the smuggling of subsidized products to foreign countries.
