RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With drug short­ages al­ready hit­ting T&T be­cause of ship­ping and for­eign ex­change short­falls, sev­er­al si­nus and de­con­ges­tant med­i­cines nor­mal­ly avail­able over the counter have now run out.

Phar­ma­cists say even be­fore the preva­lence of Sa­hara dust led to heav­ier de­mand for the drugs, there was a short­age of sev­er­al drugs in­clud­ing Codeine Linc­tus, Bi­sol­ven Pe­di­atric, Advil Cold and Si­nus, Se­do Solvin, Bron­cho Solvin and Histal Al­ler­gy Re­lief Exlir.

At the pop­u­lar MedS­mart Phar­ma­cy at Dun­can Vil­lage, phar­ma­cy tech­ni­cian Natasha Williams said an­ti­his­t­a­mine drugs ran out months ago. She said Panadol Cold and Si­nus, Clar­i­tyne, Aerius and Lo­rata­dine were all they had avail­able for si­nus.

"Peo­ple come through our doors every day ask­ing for these med­i­cines. The Advil Cold and Si­nus is pop­u­lar but now we don't have it, so we rec­om­mend ei­ther the Panadol or the Lo­rata­dine tablets which they use once per day and it works very well," Williams said.

She ex­plained that the short­age of si­nus drugs was not caused by the Sa­ha­ran dust.

"This short­age ex­ist­ed long be­fore the dust be­came bad. It is hap­pen­ing since the pan­dem­ic so I most be­lieve it is the ship­ping is­sues that could have caused this," she said.

Pri­or to the short­age, Williams said peo­ple came to the phar­ma­cy and bought big box­es of Advil and oth­er Si­nus med­i­cines, which were nev­er re­plen­ished be­cause stocks ran out.

Mean­while, Valmi­ki Ram­nar­ine, the own­er of Vali­ni's Drug Mart, al­so shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

"There has been a short­age of de­con­ges­tant drugs, like Advil Cold and Si­nus. We don't have any­thing with pseu­doephedrine. All of those liq­uids are in short sup­ply," Ram­nar­ine said.

He added that sup­pli­ers were not get­ting their full quo­ta of med­i­cines.

"Coun­tries of man­u­fac­ture are keep­ing the drugs for them­selves rather than to ex­port," Ram­nar­ine ex­plained. He said there were short­ages in de­con­ges­tants be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and in­ter­rup­tions in the glob­al sup­ply chain.

Ram­nar­ine said he was thank­ful that sup­plies were slow­ly com­ing back to nor­mal, al­though in small­er quan­ti­ties.

When asked whether this has trig­gered an in­crease in med­i­c­i­nal costs, Ram­nar­ine re­spond­ed:

"Prices are not in­cred­i­bly high. There have been in­cre­men­tal in­creas­es, not ex­or­bi­tant in­creas­es. Things in the world are nor­mal­iz­ing slow­ly but I will say there is about a ten per cent or a 15 per cent price in­crease."

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the Phar­ma­cy Board, An­drew Ra­haman, told Guardian Me­dia that there were al­so is­sues be­ing faced with the im­por­ta­tion of drugs.

"There have been sig­nif­i­cant short­ages of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. It is not the gov­ern­ment's fault. We have a prob­lem where Chi­na has been hav­ing prob­lems in the man­u­fac­ture be­cause of short­age of raw ma­te­ri­als and fac­to­ries are op­er­at­ing at half ca­pac­i­ty. Then there are ship­ping prob­lems," he ex­plained.

“Apart from these is­sues, there is al­so a sit­u­a­tion where man­u­fac­tur­ers are keep­ing their drugs for do­mes­tic use and are not ex­port­ing," Ra­haman said. He not­ed that for­eign ex­change was al­so an is­sue.

Ra­haman said re­cent­ly it was brought to his at­ten­tion that there were set­backs in­volv­ing the Min­istry of Heath’s two reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies—the Drug In­spec­torate and the Chem­istry Food and Drug Di­vi­sion.

"I un­der­stand there are some prob­lems with the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies in the Min­istry of Health and lots of com­pa­nies out there are out of stock for a lot of items.  They haven't giv­en me the de­tails as yet, but they men­tioned it is a prob­lem with the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies in the Min­istry," Ra­haman said.

Last month, the Min­istry said some drugs are not nec­es­sar­i­ly out of stock but are in short sup­ply.