The Min­istry of Health has sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that it is close­ly man­ag­ing the na­tion­al drug sup­ply, fol­low­ing con­cerns ex­pressed by the Phar­ma­cy Board and phar­ma­cists across the coun­try.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with Phar­ma­cy Board pres­i­dent, An­drew Ra­haman, as well as sev­er­al phar­ma­cists, who con­firmed they have not re­ceived a sup­ply of cer­tain med­ica­tions for as long as a year.

Mr Ra­haman had not­ed two key rea­sons for the de­vel­op­ment: sig­nif­i­cant ship­ping de­lays, and the fact that the coun­tries man­u­fac­tur­ing the drugs are keep­ing the prod­ucts for use among their own pop­u­la­tions in light of the scarci­ty of raw ma­te­ri­als and man­pow­er, among oth­er chal­lenges.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased last night, the Health Min­istry said in the face of glob­al sup­ply chain chal­lenges, which have been am­pli­fied due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, it con­tin­ues to close­ly man­age the na­tion­al drug sup­ply.

The Min­istry re­ports:

“Some of the strate­gies that are con­tin­u­ous­ly em­ployed in this re­gard in­clude but are not lim­it­ed to: in­ter­nal redi­rec­tion of med­ical sup­plies to crit­i­cal ar­eas of need; ap­pli­ca­tion of al­ter­na­tive treat­ment plans; work­ing close­ly with lo­cal sup­pli­ers to ac­cess ad­di­tion­al mar­kets; and en­gage­ment of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mem­ber states to ac­cess sup­plies of crit­i­cal med­ica­tion.”

The Min­istry adds that it has been “lever­ag­ing our re­la­tion­ships with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions—such as the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO/PA­HO), the Pan Caribbean Part­ner­ship Against HIV and AIDS (PAN­CAP), and the Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC).”

The Min­istry of Health al­so wants to as­sure the pub­lic that it is “us­ing all avail­able chan­nels to en­sure that the med­ical sup­plies uti­lized are safe and ef­fi­ca­cious” and says it will con­tin­ue to “mon­i­tor this key area of op­er­a­tions”, to en­sure it ful­fils its man­date of “pro­vid­ing op­ti­mum health­care to pa­tients and to the Trinidad and To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion”.