The lack of some groups of medicines has put Brazilian pharmacists on alert, who ask the government to mediate to break the logistical blockade aggravated by the confinements in China and the war in Ukraine.
The problem is “worrying” and affects the “entire” country, although to different degrees depending on the region, the general secretary of the Federal Council of Pharmacy (CFF) of Brazil, Gustavo Pires, told Efe.
The first notices appeared in hospitals at the end of 2021 and for a month and a half they have been a reality in pharmacies, which are reporting increasing difficulties in replenishing inventories of medicines such as antibiotics or painkillers, especially pediatric ones.
THE ORIGIN OF A “PERFECT STORM”
Demand is skyrocketing in this country of 213 million inhabitants, coinciding with the entry of the southern winter in the southern half and a rebound in dengue and covid-19 cases.
“All of this generates a perfect storm,” Marcelo Polacow, president of the Regional Pharmacy Council of Sao Paulo, the richest state in the country and one of the most affected, tells Efe.
The origin of the problem is mainly in the serious imbalances in the global chains of production and distribution.
Brazil manufactures around 70% of the medicines it consumes thanks to a now expanding industrial park, but it imports more than 90% of the raw materials needed to produce them, mainly from India, but above all from China.
Importing these active ingredients today is a headache. The latest confinements in China due to covid-19 have worsened the situation, with factories stopped and ports as important as Shanghai operating with serious difficulties.
The war in Ukraine has aggravated the international logistics crisis and triggered transport costs – rise in fuel, lack of containers…-, something that has been dragging on since the pandemic.
“If the input doesn’t arrive, I can’t produce, I can’t distribute and it doesn’t reach the end of the line,” that is, the final consumer, sums up Polacow.
But it is that there are not only obstacles to obtain these supplies, but also to obtain essential parts to manufacture and even to pack certain drugs.
An example. To make some injectable formulas, water with a high degree of purity is needed, which is obtained with “ultra mega special and very expensive filters”, whose world’s largest producer is the United States, explains Pires.
Polacow points out that, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the US has limited its exports for fear that its domestic market will be short of supplies.
DIFFICULTIES IN SAO PAULO AND OTHER STATES
The consequences translate into the fact that 98.5% of the more than 1,100 pharmacists consulted in the state of Sao Paulo “suffer from shortages” of some medicines both in the public and private network, according to a survey published on Monday. passed by the Regional Council of Pharmacy.
Of this group, almost all (93.5%) reported lack of antibiotics, among the most cited amoxicillin and azithromycin; and another good part indicated mucolytics, antihistamines and analgesics, such as metamizol, ibuprofen or paracetamol.
On the ground, in the pediatric consultations of the São Paulo capital they are having “great problems” in prescribing, above all, antibiotics and cough syrups, according to a pediatrician who preferred to keep his identity confidential, told Efe.
“And this lack is generalized throughout Brazil, not only in Sao Paulo,” warns Polacow, who mentioned Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco and Goiás among the states that are also experiencing difficulties.
For this reason, Pires asks the Government of Jair Bolsonaro to “act” with an “assertive foreign policy” and “negotiate with the producing countries a minimum guarantee” of these inputs, as it did when ensuring the supply of Russian fertilizers for the agricultural sector. doctors.
THE INDUSTRY ASKS TO FREE PRICES
The Brazilian pharmaceutical industry reduces the problem to “specific issues” and rules out a structural shortage, according to Reginaldo Arcuri, executive president of the FarmaBrasil Group, an association that brings together the main national firms in the sector.
And they also have their own demands.
Arcuri points out that, due to the increase in costs and since there is no “price freedom” for medicines in Brazil, where this price is set by the Government, drugs such as injectable metamizole have ceased to be profitable and some national manufacturers have stopped their production. .
Given this, the Brazilian Medicines Market Regulatory Chamber – an interministerial body – published a resolution on June 1 in which it temporarily freed the prices of medicines “at risk of shortages in the national market”, something that is expected to be felt in the pocket of the Brazilians.
–
