The supply of medicines in Mexico is one of the major problems of this government which has made health one of its main themes and promises the construction of a social security system. The country frequently suffers from shortages, especially of drugs, so President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) proposed on Wednesday August 2 a kind of national “super-pharmacy”, a reserve bank of drugs to combat the shortage drugs in public hospitals across the country.
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From our correspondent in Mexico,
This national super-pharmacy, located in central Mexico, would truck or fly medicine to any hospital in the country if it ran out. The Mexican president did not give more details on this project, especially on the questions of the lifespan of drugs, costs and methods of distribution, but this is yet another attempt to solve this problem. recurring drug shortage in Mexico.
Since coming to power, the AMLO government, promising to end corruption, has attacked several pharmaceutical companies, opening investigations for irregularities. It also set out to build a new drug distribution purchasing model : he first asked the United Nations, then he went back to create a new institution, before finally entrusting the responsibility to the Ministry of Health. So many reversals that are perceived as a lack of planning.
Use the black market to obtain drugs
In the country, it is mainly hospitals and public health centers that lack pharmaceutical products, a bit of all kinds: from simple aspirin to drugs against diabetes, psychiatric treatments and especially treatments against several types of cancers. . According to a patient advocacy association, in 2022, more than 15 million prescriptions could not be dispensed. This is a fundamental problem. In Mexico, the public health system is in a deplorable state. Medicines are not the only ones lacking: infrastructures and doctors also outside the big cities.
Faced with these shortages, patients are sometimes forced to travel great distances to access medicines, when they can. Some say they have recourse to the black market, for example, to obtain neurological treatments. And then very frequently, the patients or their families demonstrate. At the end of 2021, overwhelmed by deficiencies in chemotherapy, hundreds of parents of children with cancer protested in Mexico City and blocked the airport. Some are taking legal action, as was recently the case in the state of Michoacán where the families of patients in a hospital oncology department accuse the authorities of logistical omissions. And the judge in charge of the case issued an order addressed to the government to guarantee the medical supply.
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