Algeria: Urgent Licenses Required To Import Medicines For Lethal Diseases

Officials of the Ministry of Health will meet by mid-August to discuss the ongoing medicines-related crisis, which has witnessed an exacerbation after the recording of over 150 missing medicines in the national market, through the follow-up of production in local factories and production units and the signing of emergency licenses so as to import vital medicines especially meant for the treatment of chronic diseases.

The official spokesman of the Association of Private Pharmacists, Mr Mourad Chabounia, announced the mid-August meeting, ie, within 15 days with officials of the Ministry of Health, Population and Hospital Reform, to examine the current pharmaceuticals-related crisis, which has witnessed a serious aggravation during the past few days and included a myriad of diseases.

To resolve the crisis, he pointed out that emergency import licenses will be requested to import 150 medicines that are missing in the market, including those pertaining to heart ailments, rheumatism, skin diseases, antibiotics, blood pressure and arteries.

He told “Echorouk” that despite the intervention of the Minister of Health on several occasions to settle the nagging crisis, with the issuing of a number of instructions to solve the problem of scarcity of medicines on the national market, the crisis has been spiraling in recent days with the list of scarcity expanding from 130 to 150 vital missing pharmaceuticals.

This prompted the private pharmacists to intervene and demand from the Ministry of Health to meet urgently to resolve the crisis by raising the production of locally produced medicines through 80 factories, which are seemingly unable to fulfill the needs of the market.

According to Mr. Chabounia, the missing medicines are related to all chronic diseases such as those pertaining to heart, blood pressure, arteries, rheumatism, bones, skin, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and other items, which have witnessed of late a severe scarcity and are now threatening the lives of numerous hapless patients.

He noted, to this effect, that the only pharmaceutical that has been available in the market until now is that related to the treatment of diabetes with insulin not seeing any scarcity at the level of pharmacies, but in contrast Ventoline, is witnessing for its part a sharp shortage at the level of pharmacies across the national territory.

Referring to the possibility of seeing the prices of medicines hiking in the coming days, Mr. Chabounia ruled out this contingency by reassuring patients that this scarcity has nothing to do with raising the price of medicines during the next phase but is primarily related to the endorsement, by the relevant authorities, of emergency import programs as the best solution to resolving the current crisis.