Baren to empty shelves are common in drugstores in Venezueal

TODAY VENEZUELA – Anguish and uneasiness due to shortage of drugs go beyond the physical aspect and pour into social networks. It is a common scenario, filled with voices asking for help and accounts sending messages at any time, looking for medicines. Scarcity of medicines gets more severe, concomitantly with the ordeal of patients and caregivers, who rummage around drug stores, in search of antihypertensive agents, antibiotics, fever reducers and drugs for the nervous system.

Circumstances get worse as the diagnosis shows no improvement. Spokespersons of the pharmaceuticals sector point out that eight in every 10 drugs are not in the stocks. The Venezuelan Pharmaceutical Federation estimates medicines in short supply at 85% nationwide, depriving thousands chronic patients of any life expectancy.

Shortage of antibiotics, to say the least, stands at 75%

Freddy Ceballos, the president of the Federation, laments that the Venezuelan government has not shown any intention nor made any policy to reverse the plight.

For his part, the president of the Venezuelan Pediatrics Society, Huníades Urbina, warned that the current situation has an impact on children with cancer and chronic renal failure. “We have faults at public and private levels. Patients’ conditions get worse, become chronic. And rather than stabilizing or going into remission, they die.”

The Venezuelan Society of Public Health and the Network Let’s Defend Epidemiology caution that the humanitarian crisis in the issue of health compromises treatment of viral and endemic diseases. Notably, these organizations counted at the end of 2016, in Venezuela, more than 148,670 events of malaria. Additionally, in the first half of 2016, they reported 2,348 events of chikungunya; 20,229 events of dengue; 38,995 events of zika virus and more than 300 events of diphtheria.

Source El Universal