Habib Abdel Salam Ghaith strokes Mohammad’s bald head, worrying about how to find the medicine his 9-year-old son needs. Mohammad has had cancer for two years yet the medicine is available in neither public hospitals nor in medical centers.
Ghaith, 47, says the price of medicines used to treat cancer and other chronic diseases are “astronomically” high and only found in certain pharmacies at irregular times – even then, the brands prescribed by the physician are often not available.
Tripoli’s Medical Center has run out of medicine
Habib Abdel Salam Ghaith strokes Mohammad’s bald head, worrying about how to find the medicine his 9-year-old son needs. Mohammad has had cancer for two years yet the medicine is available in neither public hospitals nor in medical centers.
Ghaith, 47, says the price of medicines used to treat cancer and other chronic diseases are “astronomically” high and only found in certain pharmacies at irregular times – even then, the brands prescribed by the physician are often not available.
Tripoli’s Medical Center has run out of medicine
Ghaith’s son was being treated primarily at Tripoli Medical Center, where there are shortages of critical medications, including antibiotics.
On May 26, the Libyan Ministry of Health issued a statement announcing the death of a child formerly being treated at the center’s oncology division. The child passed away after receiving a dose of chemotherapy in his spinal cord. Three other children were affected by the same treatment; in two of the cases, their conditions have improved, while the third was transferred to the intensive care unit.
The ministry claimed that the medicine given to the children was purchased from private pharmacies with money donated by “good people and civil society institutions”. The ministry also announced that an investigation committee was formed to determine the causes of the incident and ensured that it would not happen again.
Latest statistics from the documentation and information center at the Ministry of Health show that 70 percent of deaths are caused by chronic diseases such as heart diseases, strokes or tumors.
Relying on philanthropy
The manager of Tripoli Medical Center, Mohammad Hneish has reported drug shortages not only for cancer patients but in all other chronic diseases including heart and respiratory diseases and diabetes.
Hneish says that the shortage of medicine in public hospitals exceeds 90 percent. He warns that a shortage in the cancer drugs Endoxan and Holoxan threatens the lives of many patients in the oncology ward where 28 children are waiting for these drugs to complete their treatment.
Hneish, who is unable to offer anything for the patients in the hospital, says that he asks the patients’ families to secure the required drugs and equipment from the private sector. However, some families cannot afford the costs, which pushed the Center to launch “To Philanthropists” in an attempt to cover some critical necessities.
Reasons for the shortage
According to the head of the medical supply board, Khaled Ashtewi, the main reasons for the drug shortage in medical centers is the delay in budget disbursement and the insufficiency of allocated funds. In addition to the administrative red tape starting with the Medical Supply Organization and Ministry of Health to the Audit Bureau, Central Bank and pharmaceutical manufacturers. “Despite the tremendous efforts, we could not get around this bureaucracy that consumes much time,” says Ashtewi.
Ashtwei also explains that the most important drugs provided by the Medical Supply Organization are related to blood derivatives and insulin for diabetes patients, anesthetic drugs and drugs for kidney implant and dialysis, AIDS medication, vaccines and cancer drugs. He adds that in 2015, the money allocated for importing drugs was 55 million dinars (US $40,000,000) which has not been available this year. Thus, the drug shortage crisis has dramatically worsened in the last three months.
Private sector
Manager of a drug import company, Dr. Hossam Jadou’i says that the public sector’s inability to supply necessary medications gives the private sector the opportunity to provide them. However, many pharmaceutical companies do not comply with the drug import regulations or storage requirements. The Libyan government prohibits private companies to import some cancer drugs such as those needed for chemotherapy.
Jadou’i suggests that the Ministry of Health ought to offer private companies the chance to provide these drugs under the Ministry’s supervision as a solution for patients forced to travel outside of Libya to buy medicine, or who buy it from pharmacies with no legal or health guarantees.
Yet Dr. Khaled Taleb, Deputy Minister of Health in the National Salvation government in Tripoli attributes the severe shortage in drugs to the reluctance of many manufactures to provide drugs to Libya because of the rising government debt, though its contracts with them are still valid.
Taleb says that corruption plays a major role in aggravating the situation, and explains that some drugs for chronic diseases, imported on behalf of the public sector, are stolen and sold in private pharmacies.
