Does corruption make Syrians sick?

SMN No. 8, August 27, 2010

Writers highlight concerns over poor quality medicine and corruption A blogger known as “Syrian Citizen” criticised a cancer hospital for failings its patients in a recent post.

The blogger mentioned one particular hospital where, he said, patients were not receiving proper treatment because of a lack of medicine.

This hospital specialises in the treatment of cancer, and the blogger claimed that most patients admitted to it ended up in either a worse physical condition or even died due to a lack of material needed for chemotherapy.

The blogger, who said he got his information from unspecified medical sources, added that the materials used in chemotherapy were being sold to private hospitals instead of being used to treat patients.

Meanwhile, an article published on August 15 by a local website received wide attention for describing the state of medicine production in Syria.

The author of the article, Maan Akel, spent three months in jail because of his investigative piece ahead of its publication.

The journalist surveyed 164 doctors and interviewed medical experts about the country’s large number of pharmaceutical factories. According to his survey, the majority of doctors said that they had 50 per cent or less confidence in medicine produced in Syria.

One of the doctors interviewed said that the raw materials in the local manufacture of medicine came from India and Korea and were of poor quality. Others said that corruption and desire for easy gains made medicine manufacturers in the country produce items of low quality.

There are around 64 factories of medicine in Syria, more than in developed countries such as France, and they produce 90 per cent of the medicine available on the local market.