Yemenis groan under smuggled medicines and high prices [Archives:2006/927/Business & Economy]
Mahyoub Al-Kamali
According to a Ministry of Health inspection campaign conducted in the capital secretariat earlier this week, Yemenis are living under crushing deteriorated health conditions and smuggled expired drugs that are widespread in markets and pharmacies. At the same time, consumers find varying prices for foodstuffs in the market. Prices are very high in some stores, while in others, they are at medium levels, reflecting troubled and uncontrolled price rates.
While concerned institutions busy themselves with internal woes and preparations for September's presidential and local elections, citizens are drowning, deep in problems embittering their daily lives. Yemeni families currently suffer much as a result of aggravated poverty, which is expanding its social segments, and scarce job opportunities.
Many citizens complain of their health conditions while others talk of inability to gain job opportunities. Amidst such talk, official authorities speak in detail about meeting citizens' needs and helping the poor via a national poverty fighting strategy and realizing sustainable development. The striking thing in this regard is general public feeling of the need for honorable living and obtaining medicine, lodging and clothing; however, looking for jobs is futile as long as the market situation remains as is without available job opportunities to end prevalent unemployment.
Worker Mohammed Al-Matari has waited since early morning at the used goods market without finding work to earn money for his family. He says, “Fatigue accompanying a person while shopping or selling at the local market is doubled because of citizens' loss of trust in sellers. This is associated with most merchants' greed and their desire to wring out the highest possible profit at the expense of everybody. They take advantage of the uncontrolled Yemeni market and open borders. Added to this is the deep sleep of concerned authorities. The result is that we find much price difference for a simple commodity from one shop to another on the same street.”
Worker Saleh Al-Raimi mentioned that the price rule exception increases citizens' suffering, especially when buying medicine, for many reasons. One reason is citizens' favorable judgment of those trading in an important commodity. The citizen usually will rule out being exploited for goods he is in dire need of, as it is known that the patient receives sympathy from others. Most of the time, citizens are unable to buy goods they want, particularly necessary medicine for their lives.
Another citizen, Yahya Abdullah, mentioned that if a citizen is able to buy medicine, he then falls victim to corrupt and cheap drugs, thus shortening the patient's distance to his death. Abdullah maintained that some patients give their prescriptions to pharmacists who in turn add other drugs, causing the patient to pay for the extra medicine which costs more.
Regarding high medicine prices, pharmacist Abdulrahman Al-Faqieh said the General Authority for Monitoring and Medicine Inspection is who doubles drug prices by adding new prices onto them. He added that despite the authority's talk of implementing all-out land, sea and air inlet monitoring, which is a good thing to serve society and supported by all, smuggling operations remain active. Pharmacy sources affirmed that medicine companies do not abide by fixed pricing and attribute the change in the Yemeni Riyal exchange rate against the dollar as doubling patients' suffering.
Drug manufacturing companies say the dollar's sudden rise leads to damaging drug traders and commercial market problems. Drug companies ascribe the problem to smuggling operations, saying it is not reasonable to compete with smuggled goods sold at lower prices.
For their part, medicine authority sources pointed out that the authority gives medicine importers a five percent window within which to move due to pricing changes. Citizen Sarhan Qassim's opinion is that the government has ceased its medicine subsidies and hospitals pharmacies do not dispense free medicine to needy patients.
The question is whether concerned parties will realize what they must do for limited-income citizens, working to protect them by controlling smuggling operations, encouraging industries in this field and fixing treatment prices so citizens will be able to both buy and receive free medication.
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