Severe shortage of children’s milk in Syrian Pharmacies

Pharmacies in Damascus suffer from a severe shortage of children’s milk, especially the third category growth milk for children aged between 1-3 years and infant milk prices increased sharply.

Syrian regime government raised the Iranian manufactured milk called (nan1 and nan 2) from 425 to 1130 and nan 3 is no longer available in the market, beside difficulties importing NIDO-plus milk and its price hit 1,700 Syrian pounds if found. 

 Pharmacist “Samar” revealed that parents turned to use cow milk for infants which is dangerous on their health because no suitable milk is available or too expensive. She questioned the fate of joint agreements between the Syrian Government and Iran.

In the same context, pharmacist Tawfeeq said that the problem of scarcity of milk for children is extremely serious. He talked about the problems in importing milk to Syria on the ground that the cost of importing has become very expensive even from the regime’s allies. He added that “with the collapse of value of Syrian pound, most pharmacists are now reluctant to buy big amount of children milk as they afraid of not selling it later”

In regard to chaos in finding a policy to control children’s milk prices, the government and other responsible parties cannot do anything and each side blames the others for that mess. That put Syrian families under great pressure as they feel helpless and cannot afford to buy milk to their needy children

The official price issued by the regime government for some kinds of milk like BioMill is between 575-840 Syrian pounds, and Kikoz 1000 Syrian pounds. Therefore the government raised the price by 100% and this is not the final price as there is profit margins ranged between 100 and  200 Syrian pounds for distributors.

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Eqtsad is a Business Online Newspaper affiliated to Zaman Alwasl