Medicine shortage

As the Iran-Israel-US war reshapes the Middle East, Pakistan finds itself staring down a healthcare emergency largely of its own making. The ongoing conflict has disrupted Pakistan's imports of life-saving medicines, pharmaceutical raw materials and baby formula due to the suspension of international flights. The consequences for ordinary Pakistanis who are already crushed by inflation and unaffordable healthcare could be catastrophic.

Pakistan's stock of pharmaceutical raw materials is sufficient for only one and a half months. That is not a crisis waiting to happen but a crisis that is already unfolding in slow motion and, as always, the greatest burden will fall on the poorest faction of society. Diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart complications are already death sentences for the poor who are reliant on public healthcare. A price increase is bound to seal their fates even tighter. Even baby formula is almost entirely imported, which means a prolonged conflict could strip infants of basic nutrition.

What makes this even more devastating is that it was entirely predictable. During the Covid-19 crisis, Pakistan's health experts issued a warning about the country's inability to produce the active ingredients for most medicines. They touted the dangers of over-reliance on cheaper imports which would ruin the country's capacity to produce drugs domestically. But the country watched, learning nothing and eventually moved on.

A short-term import solution dressed as economic pragmatism has now left Pakistanis in a critical juncture that could cost them their lives. The government must now treat pharmaceutical self-reliance as a matter of national security. Tax incentives for local raw material production, public investment in pharmaceutical infrastructure and emergency stockpiling protocols are no longer optional. A nation that cannot guarantee its citizens life-saving medicine in times of conflict has fundamentally failed in its most basic duty.