While the Cuban regime offers Moscow your medicine catalog, the families of Las Tunas face a shortage of the most common drugs, especially those that prevent hypertension. The Directorate of Pharmacies and Opticians of the province assured the newspaper 26 that the industry has opted for natural medicine and the “equitable” distribution of the few doses available.
The official newspaper points out that the shortage of medicines in pharmacies is “one of the greatest concerns” of the Las Tunas population, but that “measures are being adopted to contribute to the health conditions of the chronically ill.” These alternatives, explained María del Carmen Ochoa Rodríguez, director of Pharmacies, consist of distributing the few drugs to prioritized sectors and putting “natural” products on the market to alleviate ailments.
The director pointed out that the decline of the pharmaceutical industry is due to the lack of imported raw materials. In Las Tunas alone, 28 production lines have been paralyzed and another 23 have low coverage, such as antihypertensives, distributed in insufficient quantities even to cover the demand of patients with regular prescription.
“It is a very big challenge that summons us and we know that the patient requires treatment, which is why we have control of each unit to prevent illegal acts being committed around them”
“It is a very big challenge that summons us and we know that the patient requires treatment, hence we have control of each unit to prevent illegal acts around them,” he said.
Raiza Pérez Bacallao, commercial technical director of the department, offered details about the “traditional medicine line”, such as tablets with balsam extracts. With the production of phytopharmaceuticals and apipharmaceuticals – made from plants and from the so-called active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), respectively – 18% of the medicines are covered, but the official acknowledges that they are “amounts well below the real demand “.
Given the low availability of medicines, the Pharmacy Directorate ensures that delivery to bedridden patients, psychiatric patients, children and other people in a state of vulnerability is prioritized. In addition, they are working on purifying medical certificates to “find out who really needs the drugs” and remove deceased or emigrated people from the list.
“In this process we have even noticed several medical certificates issued to the same person, which is a violation,” said Pérez Bacallao, who assured that the digitization process is advancing in the municipalities of Amancio, Majibacoa and Las Tunas.
“In this process we have even warned of several medical certificates issued to the same person, which is a violation”
Last May, the state business group BioCubaFarma warned that the industry did not have enough raw materials to guarantee the production of drugs as cytostatics –used in cancer patients–. The company’s Director of Operations and Technology, Rita María García, explained at that time that the Government does not have financial liquidity to buy more supplies or finished drugs, in addition to problems in the supply of containers on the international market.
The business group stated that it had a guaranteed supply of hydrochlorothiazide – used in patients with arterial hypertension – until August. Also the manufacture of metformin – to control the level of sugar in the blood – was limited by the lack of an excipient difficult to import. The same occurs with enalapril –for hypertension–, and allopurinol, which is used for patients with uric acid deficiencies.
Taking advantage of the regime’s rapprochement with Moscow, BioCubaFarma signed a contract at the beginning of June that will allow it to acquire active ingredients for the manufacture of generic drugs, such as azithromycin, which is a broad-spectrum antibiotic and is often in short supply in pharmacies in the Island. In exchange, the Government offered a catalog of products to treat infectious and chronic diseases, such as diabetes, neurological pathologies and all kinds of cancers.
Given the shortage, medicines have become popular among the products that Cubans residing abroad bring when they visit the Island. The Cuban authorities approved this Tuesday to maintain until December 31 the suspension of the collection of tariffs for travelers medicine importstoiletries and food.
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