Both relatives and patients highlight the great effort made by the entire medical staff of the unit, but without supplies there is not much that can be done, it is more many treatments that are being delayed due to lack of supplies, causing the disease to progress reducing the quality of life of the patient, a situation that worries Vanessa Ayala, whose mother continues treatment in the service. “We are raising funds to pay for the expenses of our patients. We are seeing that there are no oncological drugs, we practically depend on INCAN (National Cancer Hospital) and we have been seeing that drugs began to be lacking with the onset of the pandemic and now it is worse, “he said.
–
He acknowledged that the country is going through a very complicated time with the Covid-19 pandemic, but cancer patients also need their medicines. He regretted that many are delaying their chemo and are wasting valuable time beating the disease. “So we decided to organize ourselves, because everything is missing. We have all the infrastructure and since we depend on INCAN, sometimes the drugs come, others not, so we have to be prepared. We know that supplies are extremely expensive and we want to have something in the box to help people with fewer resources ”.
CRITICAL. “There is a shortage of many drugs and also the supplies that are for the preparation of oncological drugs, they are lacking and we are trying to see how to correct them. They are supplies that come to us from Asunción, from the Ministry of Public Health ”, explained Dr. José Samudio, head of the Oncology Unit of the Regional Hospital of Ciudad del Este.
They carried out all the procedures in a timely manner, but there are shortages, which is aggravated by the Covid-19 epidemic, the professional assured. “Serums are often lacking, sometimes, drugs to control nausea, control for gastritis and not to mention chemotherapy drugs are in short supply.”
Regarding the solidarity activity announced, he said that it will alleviate, but will not solve the problem, because they are very expensive inputs. “It will help to alleviate, but not to solve the problem. Here what we need is to have the medicines that the Ministry of Health must provide, that is the solution, because the costs of cancer medicines are extremely high and even more so now in this period of pandemic ”.
Cyclophosphamide is missing for breast cancer, another drug like gemcitabine is also not counted. “In these cases, thank God, the Dibén (Directorate of Charity and Social Aid) is working here, we issue them the prescriptions so that they can carry out the procedures and with that we are insisting, doing the follow-up, but many times the processes are quite bureaucratic.”
