As cases surge, city faces acute drug shortage

Bengaluru The raging Covid-19 pandemic has led to an acute shortage of antiviral medicines, medical shop owners said, adding to the rapidly deteriorating healthcare infrastructure in Bengaluru which is among the worst impacted regions in the country

Bengaluru The raging Covid-19 pandemic has led to an acute shortage of antiviral medicines, medical shop owners said, adding to the rapidly deteriorating healthcare infrastructure in Bengaluru which is among the worst impacted regions in the country.

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Medical shop owners said that several antiviral medicines like Fabiflu, favipiravir, Tamiflu, Fluvir among others are normally available in abundant supply in local chemists.

“If a distributor had 100 sheets (of medicines), the demand for antiviral medicines have gone up by a 1,000 times,” MK Mayanna, a medical shop owner and president of Bruhat Bengaluru Chemists and Druggists Association, said.

The forum consists of around 3,500 members who run such stores in and around the city.

mid reports of shortage of medical essentials, shopkeepers said, citizens are stocking up on these medicines to treat cold, cough and other symptoms attributed to Covid-19.

“The government has taken control over supply of several medicines and distributors just don’t have any of it,” Nandan, ownerof Devi Medicals in Jeevan Bhima Nagar in east Bengaluru, said. He added that it made little sense for the government to take over the supply of critical medicine to control profiteering and black marketing.

However, black marketing has become rampant in Bengaluru, if recent arrests over hoarding of Remdesivir, a drug used to treat critically ill Covid-19 persons are any indication.

Families of critically-ill patients told HT that they have paid between ₹10,000 to ₹60,000 per vial to get Remdesivir.

“The poor cannot spend their life savings to arrange it (Remdesivir and other drugs). In spite of drug stores having stock of Remdesivir, they have to wait till the drug controller sends them a request to supply it to hospitals. The government appointed only one to two officials for such a huge responsibility and this has led to black marketing of Remdesivir,” Yunus Nawab, a city-based lawyer, said.

After making frantic calls to friends and relatives, it took Nawab more than two days to get Remdesivir for his mother who was admitted in a private hospital.

“I have a report that it (Remdesivir) is being sold in black and to other states. There will be a detailed enquiry into this and all you will have to face the consequences. I won’t spare anyone,” Yediyurappa reportedly told a few officials during an emergency meeting convened by the chief minister on Tuesday.

According to the report, he said, there was evidence to show the involvement of several people in blackmarketing of these drugs.