A shortage of tampons in Argentina has turned demand for one of the most personal of personal hygiene products into a public debate over what has emptied store shelves of the product.
Government officials and product importers tossed the blame at one another on Wednesday, with Argentina insinuating that businesses are trying to drive up prices.
Speaking to reporters, Argentine Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers Jorge Capitanich said there were no special restrictions on importing tampons, which he called “sensitive products,” and blamed the shortage on a commercial “strategy” by importers.
Miguel Ponce, head of the Chamber of Importers, blamed government regulations.
In general, he said authorities have been particularly slow to issue import permits for several products.
Also, some companies have had trouble getting access to foreign currency, he said.
In recent months, Argentina has tightened its already strict control on foreign currencies in an attempt to curb inflation and capital flight. The government hopes that by restricting currency exchanges it will protect reserves at home needed to pay off its debts. That has often made it hard for importers to get the funds they need to buy products abroad.
The restrictions on imports, combined with high inflation in South America’s second-largest economy, have led to periodic shortages of pharmaceutical products in recent years, such as latex gloves and needles.
Tampons have become scarce the past two weeks. Store shelves that normally stock the products have been stripped bare in some coastal areas where tourists flock during South America’s warm summer months.
Marcelo Yarmaian, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, one of the main providers of the product in Argentina, told Telam news agency that the shortages mainly affected boxes of the most popular sizes and quantities, not tampons overall.
The company said it was working with distributors to make sure “the product is available on the shelves shortly.”
Daniela Perez, 30, said she could not find tampons when she was vacationing during New Year’s in La Lucila del Mar, a coastal city 358km southeast of Buenos Aires.
“I was looking for three days,” Perez said while shopping at a Buenos Aires pharmacy that did not have any tampons in stock. “Luckily, my sister, who was there, saved me. She had some that I brought back to Buenos Aires.”
Argentina imports most tampons from Brazil, Ponce said.
He said it would take a few weeks for the situation to normalize, in part because of panic buying.
“People see the news, get alarmed, and then go out and stock up,” he told news Web site Infobae.
In recent days, Twitter has exploded with jokes and complaints about the shortage. Some said Argentina was becoming more like Cuba and Venezuela, where hygiene products are frequently hard to find.
Claudio Guerschuny, a Buenos Aires pharmacist, told television channel Todo Noticias that in addition to tampons there is a shortage of adult diapers and children’s swim diapers.
“We don’t have a single tampon,” she said. “Drug stores don’t have answers and they also have not gotten any answers” from the government.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS