Cameroon: Diabetes patients fear for their lives as insulin becomes scarce
It’s been over five weeks since diabetes patients have been battling with the scarcity of their lifesaving medicine- Insulin. The drug is fast disappearing from shelves in pharmacies.
“The shortage is not only in Cameroon but also within the African sub-region” Dr. Franck Nana president of the National Order of Pharmacists in Cameroon, said.
Mixtape the most used insulin in Cameroon is rare and the few pharmacies where it is found have increased prices. The medicine sold between 4.970frs to 6.225frs now costs 8000frs or more. The substitution insulin Novomix 30 which was sold for 8500 a bottle is now about 20.000frs.
This shortage was alerted in December 2021 by the National Order of Pharmacists in their correspondence to the head of government, decrying the new procedures linked to the conformity evaluation program (PECAE) on all imports instituted on November 15, 2021.
Statistics show that 95% of pharmaceuticals in Cameroon are imported as disclosed by the economic service of the French Embassy in Cameroon. In 2018, imports were worth 133billion FCFA.
In 2019, more than 615,000 Cameroonians were diagnosed with diabetes, with 6% being the adult population and 10% insulino-dependent within 0-21yrs. Insulin is vital for Type 1 or juvenile diabetes as patients very often adolescents who go past 8 days without their injection risk death. Till now, all efforts to get the viewpoint of the National Center for the Supply of Essential Medicine and Medical Consumables (CENAME) have been barren.
The WHO reveals that diabetes patients in the world have moved from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014 with a death rate estimated at 3% between 2000-2019.
