Kevin Blanco got a life-saving kidney transplant 15 years ago, but the chronic shortages gripping crisis-hit Venezuela have put his life at risk again.
Faced with the disappearance of prednisone and CellCept, the drugs he needs to take every day to keep his immune system from attacking his kidney as a foreign object, Blanco had to resort to taking veterinary versions designed for pets.
“It’s a bit humiliating,” he said as he brandished a bright-pink box of prednisone with a picture of a dog on it, which costs 90 times more than the human version because it does not benefit from Venezuelan government price controls.
The nation’s Pharmaceutical Federation estimates that 70 percent of medications have disappeared from the shelves as the country struggles through an economic crisis.
Transplant recipients told reporters that early last month, their immunosuppressant drugs vanished altogether, forcing them to take desperate measures to prevent their bodies from rejecting their vital organs.
However, this last resort is “putting people’s lives at risk,” said Francisco Valencia, the head of a foundation that provides medicine to transplant recipients.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government, which since February last year has not released official figures on the shortages, denies that prednisone supplies ran out, saying a shipment of 1.2 million tablets arrived from Cuba last month.
“It’s false that there’s a shortage,” Venezuelan Deputy Minister of Health Henry Hernandez said. “Let’s remember, the rate of patients who receive transplants in Venezuela is about 2,000 per year and we have this medication for all of 2015.”
While patients did not report negative side effects from animal prednisone, transplant expert Alejandro Cisneros warned that “no medication should be used that isn’t indicated for human consumption.”
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