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The drug crisis in Lebanon, which is suffering the weight of economic and financial crises, has expanded to a point that threatens the lives of patients, especially those with chronic diseases, due to the loss of some basic medicines in the pharmacy.
The Central Bank tends to eliminate subsidies for drugs, flour and fuel, which led some pharmaceutical companies, department stores and pharmacies to monopolize the drug or hide it in stores, to resell it after an expected wave of high prices.
Fear among the Lebanese
Dozens of Lebanese queue in front of the doors of some pharmacies, to buy the rest of the medicines at a high price due to the weakness of the local currency against the dollar, for fear of being cut off like others.
Duji Itani (60 years old), a diabetic patient, confirmed to Al-Hurra that “she had to buy one of the diabetes drugs at double the price after two weeks of searching in pharmacies in various provinces”, expressing her fear of losing it. completely.
Itani indicated that he asked his family members to bring him his medicine from outside Lebanon in case they visited him, like other Lebanese patients who lost hope of finding the medicine, or even being able to pay for it, amid the continued high cost of lifetime.
More than 60 drugs have disappeared
For his part, a member of the Council of White Shirt Doctors, Dr. Hadi Murad, told Al-Hurra that more than 60 types of drugs have been lost, most of them due to intractable diseases such as blood pressure, kidneys, nerves. , cholesterol, diabetes, immune diseases and cancer.
And he considered that “hiding medicines is a crime punishable by law, and the lack of registration and investigation is collusion against the health of the Lebanese citizen.”
Smuggling and Iranian medicine
Murad clarified that “major merchants are awaiting the elimination of government drug subsidies, placing large amounts in warehouses waiting to be offered at double price, revealing” a line of smuggling through legal and illegal crossings to sell drugs. outside Lebanon in US dollars. “
On the phenomenon of the diffusion of Iranian medicines in the Lebanese market, Murad stated that “about 10 medicines have been registered with the Ministry of Health and have been priced, but not all have yet been put on the Lebanese market, and they are for intractable diseases such as cancer, nerves, immune and blood diseases, among others. “
He noted that all of them are “biological drugs, which do not meet international requirements and have not been subjected to clinical trials, which makes them a real threat to the health of the Lebanese.”
Murad noted that “preparations have been made for the rapid deployment of these drugs about a year ago, as a preventive step to replace them with drugs that are currently missing.”
The Lebanese doctor, through his Facebook account, asked Hezbollah Health Minister Hamad Hassan to inspect the PMD warehouse, which is owned by the current head of the Pharmacists Union, Ghassan Al-Amin.
I publicly challenge the Minister of Health to carry out a pharmaceutical inspection of the PMD warehouse, the second largest drug warehouse in Lebanon, which is owned by the Union of Pharmacists …
Posted by Hadi Mourad on Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Inspection review
In this regard, Mourad said that “many of the drugs lost in the market, especially those canned in Lebanon, are hidden in various warehouses and pharmacies, especially in a warehouse owned by the Pharmacists Union”, adding: “The Minister of Health must compare the initial invoice with the quantity of products in the warehouse “. And those that were distributed to pharmacies, so that he would know the defect and reveal the truth.
And he considered that “the Ministry of Health carries out demagogic inspection campaigns in which there is a lot of deployment, since pharmaceutical inspection is not carried out in front of the cameras and the media”, revealing that “it presented a group of activists specialized in the medical field a drug plan that must be maintained with the support of the government, but the ministry insisted We do not expect any serious solution to establish their own committees.
Recently, several images and videos about the extent of the need for the drug by citizens have been disseminated on social networks, the most prominent being the threat of a pharmacist with weapons to obtain the drug “Bandol”.
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