MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president is inaugurating a ‘tremendous pharmacy’ in a bid to finish the woes of sufferers all through the nation who are sometimes informed they want a selected medication — however the hospital in query doesn’t have it.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s resolution was to outfit an enormous warehouse on the outskirts of Mexico Metropolis to centralize a provide and ship it to hospitals all through the nation.
“The pharmacy goes to be massive, massive, massive, and it’ll have all of the drugs which might be used within the heath system,” López Obrador mentioned Friday.
The concept is {that a} hospital in rural Mexico can put in an order for a sure remedy, which shall be saved on the large 430,000 square-foot (40,000 sq. meter) Mexico Metropolis warehouse. The armed forces, or the government-run pharmaceutical firm Birmex, will then ship the medicine out by land, sea or air “inside 24 to 48 hours,” López Obrador pledged.
The query is whether or not Mexico can overcome its historical past of being dangerous at regulating the pharmaceutical business, dangerous at shopping for medicines, dangerous at storing them, and dangerous at distributing them. Excessive centralization additionally hasn’t helped Mexico a lot previously in lots of areas.
Essentially the most seen face of this downside are the mother and father of youngsters with most cancers, who incessantly stage protests as a result of they are saying that lately chemotherapy and different medicine have been inconceivable to acquire.
Determined mother and father blocked site visitors on the Mexico Metropolis airport final 12 months, holding up a banner studying: “There is no chemotherapy, remedy or medicines, have some empathy and sensitivity.”
The issues have killed in any other case wholesome individuals. As a result of Mexico has had issues in acquiring sufficient morphine, anesthesiologists in Mexico have needed to carry round their very own vials of the sedative, drawing a number of doses out of a single vial for routine procedures like spinal blocks throughout births.
In the USA, the place there is no such thing as a scarcity of morphine, docs are suggested to attract a single dose from a vial and throw the rest out. However Mexico cannot try this. That has led to contamination of the vials, resulting in outbreaks of injection-induced meningitis in two Mexican states which have killed dozens of individuals, a few of them People who sought remedy at clinics within the border metropolis of Matamoros, throughout from Brownsville, Texas.
To López Obrador’s credit score, he mounted a serious effort to acquire COVID vaccines in 2021, utilizing the armed forces to distribute them and volunteers to assist apply them, and by the top of that 12 months nearly anyone in Mexico who needed a vaccine bought one, free of charge.
However making an attempt to copy that mannequin of centralized authorities buying and military distribution on a nationwide scale for hundreds of medicines is just not the identical, in accordance with Mauricio Rodríguez, a professor on the Faculty of Medication at Mexico’s Nationwide Autonomous College.
“That is loopy,” mentioned Rodríguez, noting the federal government is opening the centralized warehouse with out answering how the system will function, particularly for urgently-needed drugs. He famous that concentrating all of the medicine at one web site will increase dangers, and will sideline some already-existing distribution programs.
Lots of the issues pre-date López Obrador, who took workplace in late 2018. For many years, there have been scandals involving of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} value of medicines going out-of-date at warehouses whereas hospitals could not get them.
The nation’s medication regulatory company, identified by its Spanish acronym as Cofepris, was already so riddled with corruption previous to López Obrador that regulators would cover functions for approval of latest medicines for years, and demand bribes to approve them.
And with alarming frequency, regulators in Mexico ship out alerts about falsified or knock-off drugs being bought for treating every part from most cancers to coronary heart illness. Containers, labels, vials and certifications are copied with superb accuracy, however the bottles usually comprise little or not one of the remedy.
The faux medication commerce is so widespread, and so profitable in Mexico as a result of sufferers or their relations are sometimes informed by docs to purchase drugs at non-public drug shops when they’re unavailable at authorities hospitals.
The civic group “Zero Shortages” mentioned there was a rise of 142% within the variety of alerts about falsified medicines between 2021 and 2022.
However a part of the issues are of López Obrador’s personal making. Offended at what he claimed had been inflated earnings made by drug distributors and importers, the president merely minimize the non-public corporations out and determined the federal government ought to instantly purchase all drugs.
As a result of the federal government didn’t have a lot infrastructure, contacts or expertise in such an enormous effort, López Obrador signed an settlement with the World Well being Group to assist Mexico in buying. However even with that assist, Mexico was unable to acquire some specialised remedy, one thing López Obrador blamed on sabotage by pharmaceutical corporations.
Rafael Gual, the director of the Nationwide Pharmaceutical Business Chamber, mentioned the federal government’s personal actions created “bottlenecks” in distribution.
In accordance with the group “Zero Shortages,” the variety of prescriptions that went unfilled in Mexico rose from 1.5 million in 2019 to 22 million in 2021; disruptions because of the COVID pandemic in all probability additionally performed a job.
However even in 2022, there have been nonetheless about 12.5 million prescriptions that went unfilled.
Dr. José Moya, the Mexico consultant of the WHO, mentioned centralized medical warehouses is usually a resolution, however the hot button is to have a superb logistical system.
“If they’re contemplating a warehouse like this, it is as a result of there’s a want,” Moya mentioned, “and this needs to be very nicely organized.”