Havana/The cardboard box, placed on the sidewalk of Tulipán Street, looks like an island in the middle of the human current. Strips of paracetamol, duralgin and aspirin are displayed in plain sight and some approach to feel out the prices. One of the merchants scares away mosquitoes with a fan, in the midst of the chikungunya outbreak that is shaking Havana.
“Everything is quality,” the merchant says hoarsely, with several blister packs in his hand. “It’s 400 pesos for paracetamol and 500 for duralgin, if you take two I’ll leave it at 900.” You don’t need to advertise it much: customers arrive on their own, attracted by word of mouth that has replaced the empty counter at state pharmacies.
In the midst of the health emergency, the scene is everyday and urgent. Most of the medications on the cardboard are the same ones that doctors recommend to relieve fevers, headaches and joint inflammation from the virus that has the capital in suspense. The street has become an open-air pharmacy in a city where people greet each other with “I already got the virus” or “I haven’t gotten the virus yet, but everyone in my house is infected.”
The street has become an open-air pharmacy in a city where people greet each other with “I already got the virus” or “I haven’t gotten the virus yet, but everyone in my house is infected.”
“Don’t you have any cream that works for my knees, they are very swollen,” asks an elderly man who ends up buying two strips of aspirin. “In the end, if you don’t come here, you have to pass the fever without anything to lower it,” he adds before leaving. Next to him, a young woman with deep circles under her eyes and almost robotic movements, due to joint inflammation, quickly calculates: “Two paracetamol and one acetaminophen.” The seller keeps the money in a fanny pack and arranges the merchandise. If the police appear, the improvised post will be dismantled in the blink of an eye.
The discomfort of the virus does not calm down with official explanations. The authorities insist that the shortage of medicines is due to “problems with raw materials and financing,” as the Minister of Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, recognized a few weeks ago. According to official data, of the 627 drugs provided for in the national basic table, more than 200 have serious availability problems. On the black market, these numbers are translated into cash pesos that must be paid to relieve urgent symptoms.
The afternoon sun falls on the cardboard and the pills shine for a moment, like coins. The flow of people does not stop and someone asks if there are antihistamines. A woman, with a bag of bread and a child by the hand, responds before the seller: “Here what is there is what is missing in the pharmacies.” On Tulip Street, the pain economy has found its own counter.
