ReportageWith more than 80% of imported drugs, the pharmaceutical sector is hit hard by the financial crisis and fears a lifting of subsidies on essential products.
Going from one pharmacy to another, being told that antibiotics or medical serums are unavailable, continuing with stubbornness and concern: Habib Battah often spends whole days before finding the remedies for his father at the end of his life, treated in home for lack of space in hospitals, saturated by Covid-19 patients. In Lebanon, with the worsening financial crisis, chronic drug shortages are on the rise. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s very scary, very time-consuming too. But I have no alternative. We are forced to adapt ”, says the young forty-something, independent journalist and founder of the site Beirut Report.
In a pharmacy in the eastern suburbs of Beirut, a client is invited to come back a week later for her medication. “Not being able to meet needs destroys the relationship of trust, laments Joanna Francis, the pharmacist. How do you respond to a parent who asks “how am I going to feed my baby?” Because there is no infant milk available? “ On the shelves, only a few rare cans of milk are arranged.
Obtaining medicines, more than 80% of which are imported, has become a headache for many Lebanese. Even the Sacrosanct Panadol, a widely used painkiller, is hard to find. Appeared in the fall of 2020, a year after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the shortages are worsening. Faced with the collapse of the Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves, its subsidies on basic necessities such as drugs are threatened in the short term. The quantities distributed to pharmacies are rationed. A black market has taken hold.
System rationalization
A vicious circle has also set in. Suppliers and pharmacies are accused of hiding their stocks in order to achieve juicy margins once the subsidies have been lifted. Panicked customers bought in quantity, increasing the pressure on the pharmaceutical sector. Contraband trafficking has taken place, the scale of which is unknown. “But the main problem is financial”, provides a source to the Ministry of Health.
Seeking to anticipate the dark scenario of an end or a revision of subsidies without shock absorbers, which would hit the poorest, a committee worked on a rationalization of the system. But its recommendations are in the drawers of Parliament. “If the subsidies come to an abrupt end, it will be a disaster”, predicts Dr Firas Abiad, who runs Rafic-Hariri public hospital in Beirut. Although it receives international donations, in particular for the fight against Covid-19 – which has killed more than 3,800 in the country -, it is facing intermittent shortages: “When a lack appears, we seal it, then another emerges. It is very difficult to predict shortages. “
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