Hamoud Abu Taleb

Okaz

 

I ALWAYS wanted to write about a very important issue raised by economist and writer Barjis Al-Barjis. But pressing hot topics which were far more important always came in the way.



Al-Barjis updates us with a lot of economic data through his Twitter account, and recently he noted that Germany had the largest amount of medical export in the world. The country exports medications worth $45 billion annually. Israel ranks last making $4 billion. The fundamental piece of information that Al-Barjis focused on was that India increased its medical supplies export by 112 percent over the past four years, Holland by 41 percent, and Italy by 40 percent.



Of course there were no Arab countries included in this list, despite the magnitude of diseases that exist in the region. In fact, what I wanted to write about has nothing to do with economics of medical exports, or the list of medicine exporting countries. It is the phenomenon of local commercial pharmacies that, I guarantee you, does not exist in any other country on this planet.



I will tell you what happened in our new neighborhood where I moved three years ago. Since the number of residents started growing in the area, the number of pharmacies started spreading the way viruses do in a sick body. A short street near my house has the following: a shopping center, a pharmacy, three restaurants, a pharmacy, a hair saloon, a pharmacy, a gas station, and finally two pharmacies. I’m referring to a street that is not more than 500 meters in length. But if I wanted to count the number of pharmacies on the main street I will run out of room here.



What is strange is that even in smaller cities the same issue occurs. The number of pharmacies that surround our house in my southern city always intrigued me. I wondered what was happening and did we really need an unlimited number of medications? Are we that sick? Is there a strange shady secret behind this industry that we don't know much about?



In these pharmacies, everything is sold without a proper prescription, even though each pharmacy has a sign that says otherwise. Anyone can buy any type of antibiotics as if he or she is buying Panadol. Pharmacists voluntarily prescribe medications and they sell it publicly and people are ready to buy. There is no supervision, and no one to hold them accountable.



It’s a dangerous issue that all doctors and people working in the medical sector are aware of. But we have never seen one pharmacy shut down due to such violations. How long do we allow such danger to continue? Until when?