The state Group of Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Industries (BioCubaFarma) recognized on Tuesday a 40% deficit in the basic list of medicines in Cuba.
The president of the business group, Eduardo Martínez, explained in a session in the Cuban Parliament that currently the deficit is 251 drugs, according to the Prensa Latina news agency.
Martínez assured that the insufficiency covers imported medicines and those of national production and pointed to problems with access to financing due to direct effects of the United States economic embargo.
In this regard, he mentioned that the usual suppliers stopped supplying due to the embargo, in addition to the global deficit of some raw materials and materials for pharmaceutical use.
There are also no raw materials, nor the materials necessary for production, said the director of the pharmaceutical group in charge of supplying 369 basic medicines to the national health system.
The president of the business group, Eduardo Martínez, explained in a session in the Cuban Parliament that currently the deficit is 251 drugs
Last May, the director of Operations and Technology of BioCubaFarma, Rita María García, declared to the official press that the plant –which has assigned 60% of the production of basic medicines nationwide– managed to reactivate some drug production lines of high demand in the population with the arrival of inputs purchased by the Government and other “managements”, without specifying if they corresponded to donations.
Among the drugs that were going to be manufactured again are injectables of aminophylline, labetalol, fenoterol and morphine of 10 and 20 milligrams (mg), of wide hospital use for patients in intensive care. The laboratories dedicated to the elaboration of these drugs were paralyzed for almost four months because they did not have containers –such as vials, plungers or caps– due to the shortage of glass.
BioCubaFarma has 46 companies, 115 production lines and more than 19,000 workers, according to Prensa Latina.
The shortage of basic products, such as food and medicine, was one of the main economic elements in the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021, the largest in decades.
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