Al Jazeera Mubasher polled the views of the Lebanese people on the acute medicine shortage crisis that Lebanon is suffering from due to the deterioration of the national currency, the lack of foreign currency, and the lifting of subsidies.

The director of a hospital in Beirut said that Lebanon is going through economic, security and health crises, stressing that what is affecting the citizen currently is the deepening crisis of medicine.

He said that they have reached dangerous stages regarding this crisis, and that hospitals have reached a stage with which they can close their doors due to the lack of medicine, pointing to the closing of a large hospital in Lebanon to patients, which is Al-Makassed Hospital.

He said that they are currently striving in an attempt to provide services to patients, especially in poor rural areas, and expressed his fear of not being able to continue in light of the current difficult conditions.

High drug prices with scarcity

Citizens complained about the high prices of medicine due to scarcity, which forced them to search for it in a number of pharmacies until they found it with its high price in the first place.

A Lebanese citizen said that he searched for his medicine for two months in several cities in Lebanon and could not get it with the high price, and he finally had to bring it from Syria.

Another citizen confirmed that this policy is intended, in reference to the high prices and scarcity of medicines, and it is intended, as he said, “humiliation and kneeling” without clarifying who he meant.

In apparent anger, one of the Lebanese said that he searched for a drug of his own and did not find it in all hospitals, nor did he find an alternative for it, calling for the closure of government hospitals if they were not able to provide medicine to patients.

Lebanese are suffering from deteriorating conditions and successive crises afflicting #Lebanon.. How is the situation of the citizen looking for #medicine?

#Beirut #Akkar pic.twitter.com/rTeenEgjVB

- Al Jazeera Mubasher (@ajmubasher) August 14, 2021

pharmacy owners

As for pharmacies owners, they said that the media accuses them of being the cause of the drug crisis, stressing that they are not the ones causing this crisis.

One of the pharmacy owners said that the medicine crisis in Lebanon is part of the general economic crisis in the country, which hits all sectors from the fuel sector to hospitals and others.

With regard to the drug crisis, one of the pharmacy owners referred to the decision issued by the Ministry of Health, which called on companies and importers to import the drug in dollars from the parallel market, provided that it is priced at the government price, which led to the companies' reluctance to import.

Lebanon is going through the worst economic crisis since the end of the civil war (1975-1990), which caused an unprecedented decline in the value of the Lebanese pound against the dollar, and the collapse of the purchasing power of most citizens.

The Lebanese suffer from difficulties in securing many medicines due to their scarcity in pharmacies, especially medicines for chronic diseases in light of the scarcity of foreign exchange needed to import them.

And the ability of the Banque du Liban to meet the government’s decision to subsidize the basic medicines and materials listed on the support regulations declined, which led to a decrease in the stock of medicines and infant formula in pharmacies, the loss of some medicines, and a decrease in the stock of medical supplies in hospitals.