State pharmacies face drug shortage crisis in Maputo

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State pharmacies face drug shortage crisis in Maputo

12:43 CAT | 02 May 2018

Photo: Lusa

Mozambique’s state-owned pharmacies are facing a critical shortage of essential drugs, depriving patients without the means to use private pharmacies of vital medication, Lusa has verified.

Pharmacists report that they have not had basic medicines, such as aspirin, Fansidar, used to combat malaria, chlorphenamine, used against influenza, and aminophylline, a bronchodilator, for two months or more.

The majority of the Mozambican population doesn’t have enough money to use private pharmacies, so “the drug crisis is a serious issue”, a pharmacist on Avenida Salvador Allende a few meters from the Ministry of Health said. “Months go by without us receiving the medicine that patients are looking for.”

Lusa witnessed customers in a state pharmacy on Eduardo Mondlane Avenue being advised to go to a private pharmacy across the road because they lacked one of the most sought-after medications. “Go to the Farmácia Calêndula, we do not have salbutamol here,” a pharmacy technician told a woman seeking help for asthma.

Currently, state-managed pharmacies coexist with private ones in Mozambique, an inheritance of the nationalisations which followed independence in 1975 and led to the creation of the public company Farmac.

This is the company that manages establishments like one on Avenida 24 de Julho, where Lusa witnessed three customers being turned away, their unfulfilled prescriptions still in their hands.

“This is not the first time I’ve come to this pharmacy only to be told there is no medicine. I wanted and anti-inflammatory cream, but there isn’t any,” a disappointed Rosa Cumbe said.

A trainee pharmacy technician told Lusa that the drug crisis extends also to pharmacies in public hospitals. “I’m on an internship, but I do not know what I’m going to do there because there is a shortage of drugs there too,” he said.

Patient Maria Sithole told Lusa that she couldn’t find the medication she wanted at the José Macamo General Hospital pharmacy and was forced to use a private pharmacy. “People have almost given up looking for medicines in state hospital pharmacies because there is none there,” she added.

Assimina Ring, who works for the National Health Service, said that the only drugs not lacking in the health units in the suburbs of Maputo are ibuprofen and paracetamol, while the rest are scarce.

In a public debate during his participation in London at the Commonwealth summit in April, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi admitted that the country has recently faced a shortage of Aids drugs, blaming the cut in international aid due to the scandal of the state’s hidden debts.

A Ministry of Health source acknowledged that state-run pharmacies were having difficulty providing medicine, but that the situation in public hospital pharmacies should be analysed on a case-by-case basis. “State-run pharmacies are run as public companies and as such they face the difficulties common to the entire state business sector,” the source said.

In relation to health units pharmacies, some medicines that were not available in certain hospitals were available in others, because of the Ministry of Health’s distribution model.

Lusa failed in its attempt to secure further clarification from Farmac, the public entity responsible for state-owned pharmacies.

Mozambican public finances face difficulties associated with falling value of natural resources, worsened since 2016 by the scandal of undisclosed state debts worth two billion Euros.

Source: Lusa