Lebanon: pharmacies face serious drug shortage

Audio 01:17

In Lebanon, pharmacists are sounding the alarm, drug shortages are increasing.

© Noé Pignède / RFI

Text by: RFI Follow

4 min

In Lebanon, pharmacists are sounding the alarm.

The shelves of the dispensaries are almost empty.

With the depreciation of the national currency which has lost 90% of its value against the US dollar and the virtual bankruptcy of the Central Bank, drug shortages are increasing.

The coffers are empty: the state, which subsidizes these products, is no longer able to import them in sufficient quantity.

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With our correspondent in Beirut,

Noé Pignède

In the streets, patients line up in front of pharmacies.

In recent days, drugs for chronic diseases, cortisone and antibiotics are out of stock.

At the counter of her small pharmacy in downtown Beirut, Rosie Khozorian tries to keep a smile behind her mask.

Customers are not lacking, they even parade by ten, but the pharmacist has nothing more to sell them.

“ 

People are going to 1000 pharmacies to find their drugs because as you can see here, my shelves are all empty.

Medicines for chronic diseases like anti-depressants, anti-hypertensives, everything is out of stock.

If you are sick, you have to wait or else you die ...

 ”laments the pharmacist.

In front of the pharmacy, Leila Kababé, in her sixties, a prescription in her hand, begins to lose patience.

 I just got out of the hospital… I had a fall.

The doctor prescribed me medicine to treat the cartilages in my knee.

But it's been 3 or 4 pharmacies that I do, and it's out of stock everywhere.

We can't find anything!

It's not the pharmacies' fault of course, it's the whole country that is dysfunctional

, she explains.

Anger is not a strong enough word to describe our situation.

Even during the war, we lived better.

We didn't suffer like that.

The Lebanese have never lived as badly as they do today.

Never.

 "

Behind her, a young mother has been looking for milk for her baby for three days.

She too will leave empty-handed.

► See also: Lebanon: small businesses caught by the throat of the economic crisis

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