Patients feel the pain of political turmoil in Sudan
Wednesday June 08 2022
Sudanese youth sit outside closed pharmacies in Khartoum on June 18, 2020. The price of drugs has hit the roof. PHOTO | FILE
Sudan’s patients in need of urgent medical care are feeling the pinch of the ongoing political turmoil, as well as high-level inflation, as the price of drugs hits the roof.
The combination of two problems have seen prices of basic medicine rise uncontrollably as ordinary folk struggle to use the ever-weakening Sudanese pound to make purchases, in a country where civilians are already bearing the burden of high cost of food and fuel.
Some have had to decide which is easier to handle: eat and die from sickness or get medicine and starve.
This week, pharmaceutical sellers have justified price hikes, citing higher import bills from a weak Sudanese Pound. They say they are pushing the extra costs to consumers
Sudan, which had a relatively strong local pharmaceutical industry for basic drugs, has also said the raw materials have become expensive, prompting a raise in medicine prices by 30 percent.
Nasr Morgos, the Head of the Pharmacists Union from Khartoum, said that local companies that manufacture the drugs import most of the raw materials from abroad.
“The medicine is available, but it is not accessible to everyone," Nasr told The EastAfrican on Monday.
“Unfortunately, the ordinary citizen is facing a dilemma, for example, you find someone unable to buy one of the four medicines that are prescribed. I think this leads to a very big problem because the treatment is incomplete [and] the sickness condition gets undertreated.”
Taking an under dose, Dr Morgos explained, may lead to future problems including inability of the prescription to treat the same disease should the person get it again.
“We as pharmacists are in a very sensitive to the situation of our people. But we cannot help them by providing them with one or two or more medicines and leave out the rest.
“In addition, even if I were to help a patient by discounting my profit and dispensing the drugs at the price of importation, most will still be unable to get the full medicine,” Dr Morgos added.
Sudan’s problems have grown deeper since the October 25 coup last year when a transitional government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was ousted by the military, accusing it of internal wrangles. Since then, the country has been unable to create a new transitional administration as civilian groups refuse any engagements with the military which they want to stay out of a government.