HEALTH-CUBA: Gov’t Plan to Overcome Shortages on Pharmacy Shelves

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 5 2001 (IPS) - The Cuban government has adopted a plan to step up the manufacturing of pharmaceutical products with an eye to resolving the shortage of medicines in the near future and to increase exports in the sector, which has made important scientific advances in recent years.

First of all, the Medical-Pharmaceutical Industry (IMEFA) was put under the jurisdiction late last year of the Ministry of Basic Industry’s Chemical Union, considered to have greater manufacturing experience and capacity than the Health Ministry, to which it answered in the past.

The Chemical-Pharmaceutical Business Group (QUIMEFA) was also set up to direct and oversee manufacturing activity in the area through the Union of Companies of the Pharmaceutical Industry, comprised of 19 firms that run 41 factories and a research and development (R&D) centre.

The pharmaceutical industry provides jobs to around 7,000 people, including 1,800 professionals and technicians.

The new programme is to guarantee the production of more than 800 medicines considered indispensable for meeting the needs of Cuba’s 11 million people.

According to the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the production of medicines in Cuba fell 15 percent from 1989 to 1993 – a much smaller drop than that suffered by the rest of the country’s industries in the worst years of the economic crisis unleashed in the wake of the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the east European socialist bloc.

Nevertheless, the deficit of medicines was as dire as the food shortages, and authorities tried to ensure medical care for patients with chronic ailments through measures like a system of rationed distribution.

In those years, “medical products began to be hoarded and later stolen, to be sold on the black market,” said university professor María Sierra, who admitted that she frequently turned to the black market to get the medicines she needed for her sick son.

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) list of essential medicines comprises 400 products. Cuba produces twice that number, and makes all of the drugs needed to treat any possible ailment that can appear on the island.

But an informal survey carried out by reporters late last year indicated that 211 medicines on the official list of products manufactured in Cuba were not available in the pharmacies.

That deficit, on top of the material shortages and lack of maintenance plaguing the country’s hospitals, health clinics and pharmacies, constitutes a serious threat to the health system, and stands in stark contrast to Cuba’s reputation in R&D and its broad number of medical cooperation programmes with other developing countries.

“We have a medical school for students from 24 countries who are studying under scholarship, and many Cuban doctors are providing assistance in nations of Latin America and Africa, but we have a hard time getting certain medicines, and I could’t have an x-ray taken because the equipment was broken,” complained Manuel Alvarez, an engineering student.

President Fidel Castro announced last month that the shortages of medicines would be resolved by year-end.

“We are coming up with formulas for working out the problems facing the health system in the near future,” said Castro, who also underlined that Cuba was producing some of the most effective anti-retroviral drugs, which are used to treat AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome).

The programme aimed at giving a boost to the pharmaceutical industry will be financed by special government funds, and by companies in the oil sector and other basic industries, said Fernando Abreu, a QUIMEFA adviser, in an article published by the weekly magazine Opciones.

Abreu pointed out that several investments had already been arranged by QUIMEFA, mainly from import firms operating in Cuba that are willing “to offer competitive prices and convenient payment schedules.”

The Chemical Union of the Ministry of Basic Industry hopes to guarantee the production of pharmaceutical goods for export this year, in order for the sector to become self-financing in the short term.

José Miguel Gómez, with the Chemical Union’s negotiating group, told the press that 15 business deals involving technology transfer and joint ventures abroad were already underway.

Of the total 392 joint ventures between the Cuban state and foreign investors in operation late last year, 59 were based outside of Cuba, although authorities did not specify how many of the joint ventures involved the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

An ECLAC report indicated that up to 1999, Cuba exported around 15 percent of its total production of pharmaceutical supplies to 18 countries, mainly in Latin America, while it imported 90 percent of the raw materials used to manufacture such products.

Cuba’s health system is also supplied by a network of institutions involved in R&D, manufacturing and marketing of medicines which answer to the Council of State, the highest governing body.

Located on the westside of Havana, the network includes the Finlay Institute, dedicated to researching and producing vaccines, including the only one in the world that is effective in combatting meningitis B, and the Centre of Molecular Immunology, which develops anti-cancer drugs and manufactures a product that helps keep the immune system from rejecting transplanted organs.

The Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), meanwhile, manufactures a number of products on an industrial scale, for domestic use as well as for export, mainly to east Asia.

The CIBG laboratories’ Alfa and Gamma interferons, used to fight infections and tumours, have played a vital role in bringing under control epidemics of dengue fever and hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, and are also used in the cocktail therapy used to treat AIDS patients.

CIBG is also involved in the search for an AIDS vaccine. In 1991, it created the Hebert Biotec company to market its products, a step experts consider key to its development.

Cuba has more than 220 scientific-technical institutions, 16,000 research technicians and 21,666 university professors.