Happy endings are not often written when organ transplant surgeries are completed. Despite the significance of these procedures for patients, they do not mark the definitive line between life and death, as they are not the "final station" in the long journey of suffering that patients have experienced. The disease does not disappear from those who receive organ transplants, as they still require ongoing medical follow-up through lifelong medication in most cases. While things were previously smooth and natural, they are no longer so with these medications now caught in a cycle of crisis.
Today, organ transplant recipients live a compromised life that is fraught with danger due to the loss of essential medications. These medications work to suppress the immune system in the patient’s body to prevent it from attacking the transplanted organs. The issue is not limited to a few medications or most of them, but rather affects all seven vital medications that have no alternatives. All seven medications used by patients who have undergone organ transplants are completely unavailable at the drug distribution center in Karantina. The reason for this absence is singular and fundamental: these are government-supported medications. This term has recently become a curse for patients, as the current equation yields: any supported medication is missing.
This is the situation faced by patients who have successfully passed the transplant test and now find themselves unable to continue their normal lives, as it has been nearly three months since the medications were lost at the center. The center’s medications cover between 700 to 1000 patients, in addition to hundreds more under other insurance funds.
The list of transplant medications (by trade name) includes: “Cellcept,” “Rapamune,” “Myfortic,” “Certican,” “Neoral,” “Advagraf,” and “Prograf,” all of which work to weaken the immune system to ensure the coexistence of transplanted organs with the patient’s body. The first medication can be excluded from this list as it has recently been removed from the support list due to the availability of a local alternative. However, this privilege has not prevented its loss, as the local alternative cannot meet the increasing market demand for medications.
Returning to the cause of the shortage, it should be noted that the allocated funds for supporting medications are insufficient to meet the needs, a fact publicly stated by Minister of Public Health Firas Abyad repeatedly, addressing both cancer medications and other drugs that receive a mere third of the requested amount, including transplant medications.
Clarification in the "Central Bank"
In this context, sources indicate that the import mechanism requires agents and drug importers to send their files to the Ministry of Health, which then forwards them to the Central Bank for approval, followed by budget allocation. However, it appears that "the lists sent are edited at the Central Bank to match the allocated financial amount, often leading to the deletion of some medications, including transplant drugs," which results in the absence of unapproved medications. Furthermore, "the high prices of some of these medications lead importers to cease importing them based on profit-loss principles." In both cases, the conclusion is that "medications are missing."
The crisis for patients does not stop at the loss of medication, but also extends to the prices of these medications, which cannot be easily obtained, be it from the black market if available, or through purchasing from abroad. According to the supported price list, the least expensive drug among these is eighty thousand lira (approximately 55 dollars) and the most expensive is two million and eight hundred thousand lira (approximately 1850 dollars) if calculated at the official dollar rate. However, these figures vary significantly when considering the black market, with the dollar nearing 39 thousand lira, causing prices to range from two million lira for the lowest price to seventy million for the highest. Who can today keep up with this market fluctuation?
