Cuban pharmaceutical industry workers are working hard to recover some of the medicines in deficit.

By Roberto Morejón

Cuban pharmaceutical industry workers are working hard to recover some of the medicines in deficit in stores and hospitals, after receiving the raw materials for their production.

Even in the middle of the traditional vacation period for the country in coincidence with the torrid summer, workers, technicians and professionals of the pharmaceutical industry try to mitigate the shortages of medicines.

The shortages became marked due to problems with financing, raw materials and supplies, in a country that had to pool limited financial resources in the care of patients with Covid-19 and in the research and production of autochthonous vaccines.

In addition, the U.S. blockade became specifically obsessive during the pandemic, to the point of hindering Cuba's purchase of parts for pulmonary ventilators, among other mishaps.

In the midst of a very tense economic situation for the aforementioned reasons and the paralysis of tourism due to the impact of the new coronavirus, the supply of drugs in community outlets and hospitals became tense.

With the return to economic activities as part of the new normality, the largest of the Antilles gathered some resources, still insufficient, to rescue drug deliveries.

Two of the missing anticancer drugs will return to hospital warehouses this month and three of the four cytostatics in difficulty will be replenished.

The same trend can be seen in other branches of specialized health care after BioCubaFarma, the Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Industries Group, had an average monthly deficit of 142 of its deliveries during the first half of the year.

In such a complex stage to leave behind deprivations, the pharmaceutical industry also faces in the present world situation logistical difficulties to import raw materials. 

Likewise, it has to overcome impediments inherent to the U.S. siege, as is the case with a type of gas essential for the production of aerosol sprays, required by asthmatics.

So, although preliminary financing is available, the Cuban pharmaceutical industry must find ways to solve other problems.

But the goal is to meet the highest expectations of patients.