RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A de­layed ship­ment of Tacrolimus, the crit­i­cal an­ti-re­jec­tion drug used by or­gan trans­plant pa­tients, is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive on Wednes­day, ac­cord­ing to Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe.

Dr Bo­doe told Guardian Me­dia that the ship­ment of 1 mg and 0.5 mg dos­es was de­layed by a day due to a me­chan­i­cal prob­lem with a car­go plane.

“There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 pa­tients on the 5 mg Tacrolimus. The 5 mg is in stock at C40. It has not been out of stock,” Dr Bo­doe said.

He added, “The ship­ment of 1 mg and 0.5 mg was de­layed by a day due to a me­chan­i­cal prob­lem with the car­go plane. It is sched­uled to ar­rive to­mor­row [Ju­ly 16, 2025] in­stead.”

The de­lay fol­lows con­cerns raised by the Kid­ney Re­cip­i­ents Sup­port Group of Trinidad and To­ba­go (KRS­GOTT), which, in a let­ter to Dr Bo­doe dat­ed June 30, de­scribed the short­age as a “na­tion­al health cri­sis.”

The group warned that ir­reg­u­lar ac­cess to Tacrolimus was caus­ing trans­plant pa­tients to re­lapse in­to re­nal fail­ure, lead­ing to hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions, loss of func­tion­ing grafts, and forc­ing some to ob­tain the drug through unau­tho­rised and cost­ly sources.

Tacrolimus is a vi­tal im­muno­sup­pres­sant used to pre­vent the body’s im­mune sys­tem from re­ject­ing trans­plant­ed or­gans, in­clud­ing kid­neys, liv­ers and hearts. With­out it, re­jec­tion can lead to ir­re­versible or­gan fail­ure.

The drug is al­so used by chil­dren with chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, in­clud­ing those di­ag­nosed with nephrot­ic syn­drome.

KRS­GOTT said the short­age has placed hun­dreds of trans­plant pa­tients at risk and is re­vers­ing years of progress in trans­plant care.

“Kid­ney trans­plan­ta­tion has giv­en hun­dreds of cit­i­zens a sec­ond chance at life. These life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures, how­ev­er, de­pend en­tire­ly on con­tin­ued ac­cess to Tacrolimus,” the group said.

They are call­ing for im­me­di­ate gov­ern­ment ac­tion to se­cure and sta­bilise the na­tion­al sup­ply and to es­tab­lish a task force to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in trans­plant med­ica­tion.

Fol­low­ing the re­lease, the Min­istry of Health said the de­lay is tem­po­rary and stock lev­els will sta­bilise once the car­go ar­rives. Pa­tients are be­ing ad­vised to re­main in con­tact with their physi­cians for guid­ance on dosage ad­just­ments or, where med­ical­ly ap­pro­pri­ate, al­ter­na­tives.

Tacrolimus al­ter­na­tives in­clude cy­closporine, sirolimus and everolimus, which sup­press im­mune ac­tiv­i­ty in sim­i­lar ways, as well as oth­er op­tions such as be­lat­a­cept, my­cophe­no­late mofetil, aza­thio­prine and cor­ti­cos­teroids.

The Min­istry said it will is­sue an up­date once the de­layed ship­ment ar­rives.