With patients often forced to buy contraband drugs due to the devastation to the healthcare sector, many wonder if their treatments might also be contaminated.
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Yemen: The tragedy of children killed by contaminated medicine
Two thoughts came to Ashraf’s mind when he heard that 10 children with leukemia had died from contaminated medicines. The first was that his death was a horrible tragedy, the latest in Yemen’s cruel recent history.
The second was: “Could it be next?”
“He was terrified because they were being treated in a public hospital and their medicine should have been tested before use,” Ashraf, who suffers from liver cancer, told Middle East Eye.
During years of nationwide drug shortages, Yemenis have been able to find life-saving contraband drugs by seeking out the pharmacies and hospitals that supplied them, or even the smugglers themselves.
But when it emerged last week that the children had died from smuggled and contaminated chemotherapy drugs administered at a hospital in the capital, Sanaa, terror raged among patients who relied on smuggled drugs for their treatment.
“The complications suffered by the sick children required a drug smuggled from outside the country that reached a pharmacy in the capital, which was then bought by the families of the patients,” said Mohammed al-Ghaili, head of the Supreme Authority for Medicines and Medical Supplies, said on October 17.
Yemenis now feel that taking the only medicine available to them is a gamble. Ashraf said the drug he needs cannot be found legitimately and his only solution has been to buy smuggled drugs.
“I know that the smuggled drug may not work well and may worsen my health, but I cannot afford to travel abroad and the original drug is not available in the local market,” said Ashraf, who has never heard of cancer patients. dying from drug trafficking so far.
“Sometimes I can’t even find the contraband and have to wait days or weeks for it to arrive from abroad.” Ashraf, like many others, sometimes asks travelers from Egypt to Yemen to bring him medicine, but rarely finds anyone willing.
“Smugglers often take medicine with travelers to Yemen, but it’s not the safest way to transport medication,” he said.
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Smugglers intervene
Yemen’s health sector has been devastated by the ongoing war between Houthi rebels and the government backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, with more than half of the country’s medical facilities paralyzed.
Drugs that have disappeared from the market have unpopular alternatives that both patients and doctors avoid, leaving smugglers to fill the demand.
The use of smuggled drugs has become increasingly common across the country amid inaction by health ministries in both Sanaa and Aden, the caretaker seat of government.
Mohammed, a pharmacist in Sanaa, said some pharmaceuticals are no longer available because their agents are unable to import them or the importing companies have shut down completely due to restrictions on movement into Yemen.
There are only a few flights operating to Aden, and the Houthi-controlled Sanaa airport was closed for six years before being partially reopened to limited commercial flights from Amman in April as part of a truce agreement that expired in early October.
Meanwhile, several pharmaceutical companies refuse to ship their products to Yemen because they cannot guarantee that they will be handled properly at the right temperature and under the right conditions.
Mohammed, whose pharmacy stopped buying contraband medicine from traders following the incident, said he didn’t realize the danger until he heard the news regarding the children’s deaths.
There is no trust in local medicine
He said that while there are several pharmaceutical factories in Yemen, people do not trust locally made medicines, as was the case even before the war, preferring imported products.
“It is not only the patients, but even some doctors do not trust Yemeni medicine, and this means they will go for smuggled medicine, which may have been brought in conditions that are not ideal for their viability,” Mohammed said.
The pharmacist said medicines had been smuggled into Yemen for a long time and people bought them because they were cheap. “This is not new, but the new development is that patients resort to buying expensive and contraband drugs because the original ones are no longer available on the market,” he said.
The deaths of the children have sparked anger on social media once morest the Sanaa Ministry of Health and various public medical institutions.
The Houthis blame the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen for the widespread use of smuggled medicine, while they are often accused of blocking or delaying humanitarian aid deliveries.
Anees al-Asbahi, a doctor and spokesman for the Health Ministry in Sanaa, said the 38 companies that used to import medicines have left Yemen due to restrictions imposed by the coalition.
He said the Supreme Authority for Medicines and Medical Supplies, the Ministry of Health and health offices have launched a campaign to seize contraband and expired medicines.
Hani, another pharmacist in the capital, said that following the crackdown, contraband drugs disappeared from many pharmacies. But patients, including those who have been nervous regarding buying contraband drugs, still seek them out due to a lack of alternatives.
“I can see that there is a terror being felt among patients these days, and they are right,” he said. “Smuggled drugs can be deadly, but confiscating them is not a solution because patients will buy what they need, even from the smugglers’ own homes.”
Hani said that locally produced medicines are alternatives for only some types of treatments, but not for all. “The solution is to make it easier to import drugs through medical companies. Patients cannot survive without them.”
