Minister of Health and Population Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar announced on Tuesday that the medicine shortage crisis in Egypt will end within two or three months.
“Credits have been reopened from the Central Bank of Egypt for pharmaceutical companies which have begun to operate at full capacity again,” he added.
During an interview on the Extra News channel, Abdel Ghaffar stated that drug prices in Egypt are administered, and that up to US$100 million per month is directed to provide medicine.
“For every 100 medicine boxes in Egypt, 91 of them are produced in Egypt, and we import only nine of them, and we produce about four billion medicine boxes annually,” he said.
“We import oncology, immunology, and biological medicines from abroad,” the minister continued, adding: “In order to manufacture medicine in Egypt, we need raw materials and production inputs.”
Abdel Ghaffar explained that, “For any medicine to be manufactured, it needs seven months of storage.”
He noted that the shortage of the US dollar and the impact on the import of raw materials has led to companies taking medicine from stock, causing a shortage of medicine.
