Heart Patients in Pakistan at Risk Due to Heparin Injection Shortage, Rs 600 Drug Being Sold for Rs 3,000

Patients in Pakistan are facing difficulties in their treatment of heart diseases because the important Heparin injection required for the treatment has become extinct, a report has said.

There is a heavy shortage of the injection, used for thinning the blood in heart patients, in government and private hospitals, ANI reported quoting Daily Dunya.

Though the price of the injection is 600 rupees, it is being sold for 3000 rupees in the black market, the report said.

Poor patients are suffering very heavily from it. Hospitals believe that it is a false shortage, it added.

The ongoing economic crisis in Pakistan has badly hit the healthcare system where patients have been struggling for essential medicines.

Pakistan’s capacity to import the required medicines or the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) used in domestic production has deteriorated due to the lack of forex reserves, reports said in February.

The country faces a shortage of essential medicines including anaesthetics, Insulin, Panadol, Brufen, Disprin, Calpol, Tegral, Nimesulide, Hepamerz, Buscopan and Rivotril.

Local pharmaceutical manufacturers have been forced to slash their production as patients suffer in hospitals. The report added that doctors are forced to not perform surgeries due to the shortage of drugs and medical equipment.

The country’s medicine manufacturing is highly import-dependent with almost 95 percent of the drugs requiring raw materials from other nations, both including India and China.

Cash-strapped Pakistan and the IMF have failed to reach a staff-level agreement on the much-needed USD 1.1 billion bailout package aimed at preventing the country from going bankrupt. The IMF has put forward tough conditions during talks held in February and refused to approve a staff-level agreement to release funds.