Caroline Cork, The Minister of Health spoke today regarding the issue of shortages of some medicines in the country. The first thing she said is that the problem is not a new issue, and that the previous administration, that of former President Iván Duque, had been working on it.
He explained that there is an issue of medicines that present a global shortage of raw materials, packaging materials, packaging and finished products. Corcho stressed that it is a global phenomenon that manifested itself specifically due to the pandemic.
To decrease the effects of shortage affirmed that some measures can be applied, such as aggregate purchase mechanisms, or exchanges between countries to mitigate problems, or the use of an instrument called strategic fund of the Organization Pan American Health, PAHO.
this background, according to PAHO informationis a mechanism for joint purchases of medicines and essential supplies in the Region of the Americaswhich takes advantage of the technical experience of various sectors, multilateral cooperation and partnerships established in Latin America and the Caribbean to improve access to products of safe, cost-effective and quality health.
The minister also made a call in relation to shortages of contraceptive drugs, that have especially affected women, to change the brands of prescription drugs and move towards the use of generic drugs that can serve as a replacement.
He said the industry ASINFAR, Association of Pharmaceutical Industries in Colombia, announced support for contribute to the improvement of this and other products in the country.
Regarding the causes of medicine shortages, he also said that there are providers for which it is more profitable to keep the medicines in the commercial channel than in the institutional one, which has done, according to Corcho, that some producers deplete institutional chains.
“There we are going to make a call and a very rigorous follow-up that the reports correspond effectively by the suppliers and producers to be able to make the effective report and improve transparency,” he said.
Finally, he stated that there is another group of drugs that have something called regulatory pressures, such as magnesium sulfate, electrolytes, local anestheticswhich are a class of drugs with a low price in the market whose producers are required to have good practices and manufacturing that discourage the industry from produce them even if they are basic In the driving daily.
