Drug shortage
The government’s Covid-19 response has gone from ‘no problem’ to ‘no medicine to treat the problem’. After reports of surging prices, hoarding, and shortages of several medicines being used to treat Covid-infected people, the government says it has taken notice of these issues and will take action against profiteers. But as we know all too well, the best-case scenario will be fines totalling a few hundred thousand on profiteers who have already made millions.
The fact is that the approved prices of some of these medicines are so high. The approved maximum retail price for Actemra 80mg injection is Rs11,952 per vial, whereas Rs29,882 for Actemra 200mg injection vial and Rs59,764 for Actemra 400mg vial. Actemra is among the drugs being sold at higher than the approved cost, according to reports on the supply situation.
The government also took credit for restoring the supply of Tocilizumab, but worryingly, also said the National Task Force on Eradication of Spurious and Sub-standard drugs would be investigating. We must make the worrying supposition that the increased availability may be due to substandard drugs entering the market. Remdesivir also remains an issue. The drug has shown some evidence of shortening the duration of Covid-19 in people, but there is little local output, and restrictions on its import were only recently lifted.
But it doesn’t stop here. Chemists have said that people are even hoarding multivitamins, allergy medicine, and cough and cold medication and becoming belligerent when salesmen try to get them to buy less. It has gotten to the point where even medical store owners are asking the government to issue orders to ration these items.
Unfortunately, ours is a country where people continually question the opinions of medical experts. When they get sick and it is too late, the same people do exactly what the experts had said, but at home, and overmedicate to compensate for lost time, because they ‘know’ it will work. After all, why would an expert know more than a random web page or an aspiring quack relative?
Published in The Express Tribune, June 16th, 2020.