By Rostyslav Averchuk
Lviv (EFE).- Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s largest pharmaceutical warehouses, with four facilities hit so far in September, threaten to limit the population’s access to vital medicines.
The availability of some drugs has already declined while distributors adapt their logistics to the threat of further attacks amid shortages of air-defense ammunition.
“We have enough of it for the next few days. It’s difficult to say anything about what happens next,” Anastasia, a seller at the Podorozhnyk pharmacy chain in Ukraine’s western region of Lviv, told EFE about a popular over-the-counter painkiller produced in Ukraine.
Like many pharmacy representatives, she is reluctant to discuss the availability of specific medicines in detail. Rumours of shortages have already led to increased demand, and the industry fears that panic buying would place additional strain on logistics networks that are being rebuilt after a series of attacks.
Attacks and shortages
In September alone, at least six pharmaceutical distributors and pharmacy chains reported damage. The country’s biggest warehouse, Biocon, which stored large quantities of medicines produced by major global firms such as Pfizer, Novartis and AstraZeneca, suffered severe damage in the attack on Kyiv on Sep. 3.
The second-largest warehouse, owned by Universal Logistic, was destroyed in two attacks on Boryspil on Sep. 12 and Sep. 13, while another large storage facility was struck in Odesa on Monday.
“Hundreds of tons of medicines that patients across the country had been waiting for to treat a wide variety of illnesses were destroyed in an instant,” said Sergiy Hornitskyi, head of development at the Good Day Pharmacy chain.
Kyiv’s network of municipal pharmacies is currently experiencing “a temporary decrease in the number of certain imported medicines, as well as drugs used to treat chronic diseases,” according to a statement issued on Wednesday.
Shortages of some medicines have already been confirmed by patients who rely on them for long-term treatment of serious conditions, including thyroid diseases.
“We have some of the medicines in abundance. Yet we have run out of others and don’t know when this is going to change,” an employee at another pharmacy chain, First Social Pharmacy, told EFE.
Some medicines are now being shipped from Lviv to Kyiv directly from pharmacies, with the capital more affected than areas closer to the European Union border. Stocks of some medicines are limited to only two to three weeks, according to Ukraine’s Pharmaceutical Association.
Countermeasures and outlook
Russian strikes on pharmaceutical warehouses have not caused a systemic shortage of medicines so far, and pharmacy chains currently hold stocks for about one to two months, Edem Adamanov, director of the State Expert Center at the Ministry of Health, confirmed on Friday.
According to him, the pharmaceutical market is adapting to the threat by restructuring logistics and changing storage practices. Distributors and pharmacy chains are avoiding the concentration of large volumes of medicines in single locations and switching to smaller batches instead.
Some of the imported medicines are being stored in warehouses across Europe, from which they can be quickly delivered to Ukraine if needed.
However, increased logistical difficulties could still lead to “local shortages,” especially for medicines that have few alternatives or require special storage conditions, wrote Yuri Chertkov, founder of the online medicines booking service Liki.ua, in a column for NV.ua.
Higher logistical costs are already pushing up prices, which could become an especially serious concern for the population amid the deteriorating economic situation caused by Russian attacks on businesses and civilian infrastructure.
To counter this, Ukraine is building state reserves of rare and expensive life-saving medicines, stored in undisclosed locations for security reasons.
“The biggest shock (after the Russian attack) is behind us, and today we are gathering all our resilience to move on,” Sergiy Hornitskyi, from the Good Day Pharmacy, noted.EFE
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