A testimony and the figures that do not add up to purchases

A married couple, Olivia and Antonio, both 61 years old, who are battling breast cancer, have been sharing with me their way of the cross of unsuccessfully knocking on all the doors to make effective the promise of free medicines for all.

Cancer attacked her 4 years ago, apparently it had stopped and almost disappeared, but in May of this 2021 she returned and today her husband is doing the impossible even to go into debt to acquire chemotherapy, but her situation is already untenable.

They say that they are treated very kindly at INCAN and are witnesses to the despair of the doctors because they cannot help them due to the lack of drugs.

He has been acquiring as best he can one of the 2 medications that she needs. He has already bought 5 boxes of Fulvestrant, an estrogen blocker (whose trademark Faslodex is from Astra Zéneca and whose price is 40,000 pesos but which he has been able to get for less than 20,000 pesos). The doctors told him that if he got this one that stops the growth of the tumor, the Incan would put the complement to attack him: Palbociclib tablets (whose commercial brand is Ibrance, from Pfizer) whose price to the public before discounts is 75,000 pesos; or, failing that, Abemaciclib (Versenio, by Lilly, which costs 66,000 pesos).

But weeks pass and those biotechnological so-called target therapies launched between 2016-2017 do not reach the Incan. The anguish of the couple is that they still have time to save her life with complete therapy, since the neoplasm is still localized without metastasizing but with each passing day the risk of spreading to soft tissues increases and putting her at severe risk. She is full of life and with great spirit and attitude to continue living. He is moving and knocking on many doors so that their right to health is realized, repeated by the president at all voices in his conferences.

But they are confirming that they are empty words, and given the wall that Insabi has encountered, CCINSHAE and the Ministry of Health are already exploring the judicial option to demand full treatment from the State. It is a desperate race against the time that thousands of families are surely living today in Mexico as a result of the shortage. In this case we are talking about highly expensive patent drugs, but the incredible thing is that the same battle is being faced by many other patients due to the lack of low-cost generic chemotherapies that until 3 years ago were normally accessible, but which, by presidential decision, absurdly stopped being produced in Mexico.

There must be thousands of stories lived every day in high specialty hospitals that are not receiving the treatments previously insured from the Catastrophic Expenses Protection Fund of the defunct Seguro Popular. Now with Insabi it is another of many lines of health in which we have regressed.

They do not check the reported purchase figures

Given this reality, the announcements by Secretary of Health Jorge Alcocer that millions of drugs have already been purchased are empty. As long as they do not reach the patient, they mean nothing.

At the end of the day, the volumes of announced purchases do not make sense either:

Alcocer reported that between Insabi and UNOPS they bought 265 million pieces. It sounds like there are many pieces, but if it is compared with the traditional volumes of an annual consolidated purchase in previous six-year terms that included more than 2 billion pieces, the reality is that this year the public system has barely bought just over 10% of its annual demand.

And besides, they reported savings: they spent 79,000 million pesos instead of the almost 100,000 million originally planned for the consolidated purchase.

What they would have to report is the amount spent by the institutions (IMSS, Issste, Sedena, Semar, Pemex) on emergency purchases and direct awards when they were given the order known as “Sálvense who can” in February.

The accounts are not complete to be able to compare and really know how much the Government spent this year on medicines and healing materials.

Pandemic and unemployment hit PAH patients

And speaking of a lack of treatments, patients with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (it is estimated that there are about 6,000 in Mexico) have been seriously affected by the pandemic, not only because, like everyone else, they have been relegated to Covid, but also those who have lost their They also lose the continuity of their treatment because when they go to Insabi they no longer have the same care as in ISSSTE or IMSS. And it is that the vast majority of those affected by PAH are young adults in a productive stage who have to survive as best they can in the face of the health system that does not really have a functional structure. Experts made it clear at the conference “In Mexico you live or survive with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension” that I had to moderate a few days ago and that was organized by the Mexican Association of PAH.

Bayer Launches New Hemophilia Therapy

A new treatment option for people with Hemophilia type A (deficiency in the production of clotting factor VIII in the blood) was announced in Mexico by Bayer.

The pharmaceutical company hopes that its third-generation molecule, by allowing the number of infusions -from 216 to 120 intravenous injections per year-, will become the best treatment option for these patients and will also give doctors more security and confidence to lower the risk of bleeding, which is the main problem of this low-incidence genetic disease that affects some 5,000 people in Mexico.

Dr. Simi celebrates 24 years

With long tablecloths, there is the team of Victor González Torres whose concept of similar pharmacies called Doctor Simi is celebrating 24 years with 8,000 branches and franchises established in the Mexican Republic and with a strong presence in Chile.

Converted into one of the largest pharmaceutical emporiums in the country, Grupo Por un País Mejor has had an unprecedented expansion in the last decade and today it is made up of 4 commercial companies: its network of 6,000 Similar Pharmacies together with its network of analysis laboratories. Clinicians, its drug producer Laboratorios Best, with which it started as a supplier to the IMSS, and its logistics distributor Transportes Farmaceuticals Similar

There is no doubt that his multiple disruptive strategies such as similar drugs before interchangeable generics, installing clinics adjacent to pharmacies and even selling tortillas in his pharmacies, have worked for Dr Simi to the extent that to date is one of the leaders in the sale and distribution of generic drugs not only in Mexico but in Latin America.

INAI instructs SS to report on hiring

As the Ministry of Health is in a mess, everything is difficult, including and above all being transparent. But making excuses for not giving information on the hiring of health workers to face the pandemic, that was absurd. So in the face of his refusal to deliver that data, the INAI revoked his response and ordered him with greater emphasis to account for all the contracts made to attend Covid.

And how good that the INAI Plenary supported Commissioner Josefina Román’s request because giving such basic information as the number of health personnel eventually hired during the health emergency should not be so complicated. And it must specify, apart from the number, now the validity of the hiring, state of the Republic in which the services are provided, amount of salaries paid, granting of permanent places and opening of new places in 2021. Basic data for any health institution.

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