President López Obrador He promised that Mexico’s health services would be like those of the Nordic countries. However, before the shortage of medicines, his government is following the example of the poorest African countries: it has already opened the importation of medicines from China and India, which do not have high standards of verification, that is, it is not proven that those medicines cure what they say they cure.
The federal government is fighting with companies Private Pharmaceuticals He accuses them of being corrupt, raising the prices of medicines and even generating the crisis of shortage of medicines in the country as a method of blackmail and pressure. To fend off the pharmaceutical companies and try to improve supply, the government recently published an authorization that allows the import of drugs that are prequalified, that is, they have not yet been 100% proven to work for what they say work. Generic pirate, if I am allowed the term.
Some of these medicines come from China, others from India, a country that is known worldwide for having a double standard: first-class medicines circulate within its territory, but if you are asked to make second- or third-party medicines, make them.
The government will argue that this opening to import involves buying medicines endorsed by the World Health Organization, but that is a trick: WHO does not endorse the effectiveness of medicines, but rather evaluates the health authorities of the countries to make sure that have the equipment and the knowledge that allow them to evaluate the effectiveness of the medicines. That is, one thing is that you have everything to make a good medicine and another that you actually do it.
Why does WHO do this? Because he is interested that the world’s poorest nations have access to medicines. Because in countries in extreme situations of hunger, poverty, war, it is better to have medicines that half cure not to have medicines.
Mexico still has high international certifications in the field of drug approval, that is to say, that the most prestigious organizations in the world endorse that when Mexican authorities determine that a medicine is used for such a thing, it does indeed work for that. By lowering its standards, Mexico approaches sub-Saharan Africa and is misaligned from nations such as the United States, Canada, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.
It seems to me of applause that President AMLO has come to power with the mission of eradicating corruption and, in that sense, cleaning up government purchases. It is understood that he suspects corruption in the contracts with the pharmaceutical companies: in the case of the Peña Nieto administration, the strange thing is that there had been no corruption. But the poor design of public policy to achieve these objectives has unleashed the shortage and has ruined the government to end up buying medicines … from the same private companies that he labeled as corrupt and vetoed.
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