(Eqtsad)- Residents and displaced in the opposition-held areas in northwestern Syria have been under new suffering as medicines prices vary between area and another and between pharmacies itself.
Eqtsad tried to investigate the reasons behind the variation and the increase of prices in some pharmacies.
The beginning was with a pharmacy in the center of Idlib, where the pharmacy owner told Eqtsad that it’s due to the different sources of medicine supply in the liberated areas, as each warehouse sells at a different price.
Not to mention, the absence of a pharmacist in many pharmacies made it a sale free so no one adhered to the approximate price. Also, there is no unifying of interest percentage between pharmacies and transport fees that differ from one place to another.
The rural warehouses are not legally licensed and got no pharmacist, and this leads to the lack of experience in selling the medicine at its normal price. Some of these warehouses do not comply with the conditions of opening, which provide for storage standards.
The pharmacist we met said that the medicines are imported and set the American Dollar that’s why the prices are high.
He pointed that many pharmacies bargain just to attract the customer and increase sales without maintaining the proportion of normal profits of the pharmacist.
High-income pharmacies rely on withdrawing the warehouses offers and obtaining a discount from it so the pharmacy can reduce the price of the medicines, without taking into account low-income pharmacies.
At the end of his speech, the pharmacist stressed the need of a pharmacy syndicate.
Another pharmacist considered that the regime imposes royalties on the barriers through which the medications passes, so the warehouses raise the prices and it become different in some pharmacies.
The security checkpoints in Damascus controlled by the army’s elite Fourth armored Division and the Republican Guard are imposing 'royalties' on cars heading towards the liberated areas.
The price of the medications also varies according to the manufacturer, it has the same effect, but another name and price.
In the same context, the pharmacist said that the profits were limited by the time of control of the regime by 20%, but nowadays the interests are free (30% for the known medicines and 200% if it is rare).
She also stressed the pharmacies in the city do not take into account the conditions of the safety distance between them as in the regime’s days.
“These days most of the graduated young people opening a pharmacy, without taking into account the requirements of this profession” she said. “We need a syndicate to take strict measures against violators”.
“I buy my medicines from this pharmacy and I do not feel any problem, because I only buy from this pharmacy” said a woman we met in Idlib.
At the end of the tour, some residents of the city told Eqtsad that the best way to confront this phenomenon is by imposing strict controls on everyone, in a manner that will allow the stability and discipline of work, not only in the pharmacy profession, but in various professions and economic sectors.
EQTSAD
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