Nevertheless, with the increase in the value of US Dollars and the simultaneous efforts of the Ministry of Health to regulate and cut down the prices of drugs, volumes of medicines are becoming non-profitable for distributors to import.
by Perla Kantarjian -Source: Annahar
BEIRUT: With a pharmaceutical market dominated by imports, Lebanon’s crucial healthcare contributors are suffering from the repercussions of the US Dollar shortage and the increasingly deteriorating economic outlook.
The local pharmaceutical ecosystem consists of more than 100 importing and distributing companies, 11 manufacturing industries, and more than 3000 registered pharmacies.
In 2019, “Products of the chemical or allied industries” ranked second in Lebanon’s top imports, with pharmaceutical products comprising the lion’s share, according to a research on Lebanon’s trade activity by Blom Invest Bank.
However, with the rising price of dollars and the crash of the Lebanese Lira, importers of pharmaceutical products are struggling to make do, the chain-reaction of which is the intensification of the challenges the pharma sector is overall facing.
“The problem comprises not only the drugs’ importation and market availability, but also the fluctuation in the payments to the distributors, and the profit margins of the pharmacies coping with the reduced purchasing capacity of their patients,” said Doctor Anita Salemeh, a pharmacist in the Achrafieh area.
“Prices of medicinal products are changing in an undesigned way, irrespective of the profit margins of pharmacists,” Salemeh told Annahar, adding that at the end of the day, pharmacists are finding themselves torn between their medical ethics, and their basic living rights.
“As pharmacists, we prioritize ethics over anything else,” she said. “However, it is also our right to make a living out of our work.”
Adding to Salemeh’s perspective is Jad Sakr, Pharm D, who, in his pharmacy in the Antelias area, has limited the purchase of expensive products such as parapharmaceuticals, focusing on “good, lower-priced products to fit with the current demand.”
The dollar crisis and its accompanying stagflation has negatively impacted the cost of living of all Lebanese citizens, including pharmacists, who have been “working at high speed in difficult conditions,” but with revenues remaining at the level of 1515 lbp while their supermarket bills are drastically increasing, Sakr said.
“We understand the Ministry of Health’s efforts to reduce the medical bill of the Lebanese citizens,” he explained, “However, the heavy weight related to the cost of these specific medicinal products on the cash flow of the distributors and pharmacists might decrease the appetite to supply these very products.”
For Sakr, the main concern is to avoid shortages and maintain the supply of medicines at the level expected by his patients, since “the profession of pharmacy requires a lifetime devotion to the service of others.”
Nevertheless, with the increase in the value of US Dollars and the simultaneous efforts of the Ministry of Health to regulate and cut down the prices of drugs, volumes of medicines are becoming non-profitable for distributors to import.
According to a source in pharmaceutical imports, the central bank is covering, “at a very slow rate,” 85% of the supplier invoice that gets transferred outside, leaving the distributor to pay for the remaining 15% with fresh money obtained from the black market at the exchange rate of 3,750 lbp.
“For the past two weeks, we have been on the hunt for US Dollars since we have shipments from abroad on hold, awaiting the payment we are struggling to acquire,” the source told Annahar.
“At this rate, a shortage in the supply of a great many imported drugs is imminent,” he warned, unless the central bank announces a mechanism for pharma distributors to purchase dollars at a stabilized rate for the 15% fresh money that they need to complete their operations.
According to Doctor Pascal Jarjour, pharmacist and UK Researcher, patients are blaming pharmacists for the intense fluctuation in various pharmaceuticals’ prices, unaware that it is the Ministry of Health that decides the prices.
“Despite working in distressing circumstances, our profit margins are decreasing,” Jarjour told Annahar. “If things carry on in this manner, less medications will be imported and distributed to pharmacies, leading to the shortage of essential drugs, and ultimately the inevitable bankruptcy and closure of numerous local pharmacies.”
“Patients are at the heart of what we do,” Jarjour said, “But pharmacists also need to be acknowledged as heroes fighting an everyday battle to keep their profession running.”
As Salemeh told Annahar, “The Ministry of Health must establish a logical plan with updated regulations in order to protect the rights of all concerned sides,” especially the pharmacists who are “on the front lines.”