Food or medicine? Stark choice for sick Argentines
WORLD
By AFP
Published March 1, 2024
Medicine sales in Argentina dropped by 10 million units -- bottles, boxes or ampules -- in the month of January - Copyright AFP JUAN MABROMATA
Sonia AVALOS, Daniel MEROLLA
In pharmacies in crisis-riddled Argentina, people look at the prices on medicine containers, then put them down again.
Even prescription antibiotics and chronic treatments are being ditched in a country where annual inflation exceeding 250 percent means that healthcare has become a luxury for many.
“Between eating and buying medicine, people choose to eat,” pharmacist Marcela Lopez told AFP from behind her counter in the capital, Buenos Aires.
Medicine sales in the country dropped by 10 million units — bottles or boxes — in the month of January, according to the Ceprofar pharmacists’ association. More than two-thirds were prescription drugs.
Desperate patients also feel abandoned by the public health system, where many medicines have become unavailable since the government of President Javier Milei, who took office in December, ordered an audit as part of his quest to slash public spending.
Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/food-or-medicine-stark-choice-for-sick-argentines/article#ixzz8TQ8tsCGR
= new reply since forum marked as read
