At least 50% of medical drugs are out of stock in Zimbabwe’s pharmacies because of critical shortages of foreign currency, making life harder for struggling Zimbabweans, it emerged on this week.
The few available drugs have shot up in price, putting them well out of the reach of most white-collar workers, the state-controlled Herald daily said.
Desperately needed drugs for conditions like HIV, diabetes, high blood pressure and epilepsy are now found in only about one pharmacy in four, the paper reported after a snap survey.
”We have applied for foreign currency and we are waiting for allocations. Most pharmacies can no longer afford to import drugs, so the few that are still importing tend to be expensive,” Ishe Nkomo, the president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe, said.
The situation spells bad news for the one in seven Zimbabweans estimated to be living with HIV. A month-long prescription of Stalenev 30, a common antiretroviral drug, now costs Z$85-million, more than six times a teacher’s salary, the Herald said.
More than 90 000 Zimbabweans are currently believed to be taking antiretrovirals.
Medicines against malaria, another of Zimbabwe’s biggest killers, are also proving hard to come by. Simple anti-mosquito repellents that are smeared over the body now cost an average of Z$20-million per bottle where available.
Foreign currency inflows to Zimbabwe have dwindled over the past seven years. Critics of President Robert Mugabe’s regime point to plummeting agricultural receipts, especially of prime forex earner tobacco, following the launch of a controversial land-reform programme before elections in 2000.
Reports of violent farm invasions have kept away foreign tourists.
Many businesses have closed down and exporters have also scaled down production, partly because of the unattractive rates at which they are forced to exchange their earnings.
Mugabe and his ministers blame the forex crunch on Western sanctions.
Zimbabwe’s health sector has been hard hit by the economic crisis.
Doctors and nurses have streamed out of the country in the search for better pay. Reports from former colonial power Britain have revealed that at least 16 000 nurses from Zimbabwe had been granted working visas in the last eight years. — Sapa-dpa