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Monday, July 21, 2025

Pharmacies, patients reveal shortage of critical asthma drugs

by

Carisa Lee
1472 days ago
20210710
Ventolin Inhaler used by asthmatics, is said to be in short supply.

Ventolin Inhaler used by asthmatics, is said to be in short supply.

Carisa Lee

There is a short­age of Asth­ma drugs at phar­ma­cies in the coun­try. Res­pi­ra­to­ry so­lu­tions such as Ven­tolin, Atro­vent and oth­ers have been out of stock at drug­stores for weeks, in some in­stances months, as own­ers can­not source it from the dis­trib­u­tors.

“A lot of peo­ple ask­ing for it,” one phar­ma­cist in East Trinidad said yes­ter­day.

When con­tact­ed, one of the dis­trib­u­tors, Smith Robert­son & Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, did not have so­lu­tions. They said the sup­pli­er was out of stock and could not say when they would get more.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to sev­er­al phar­ma­cies both in Trinidad and To­ba­go who al­so con­firmed sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. Asked if they had ei­ther Ven­tolin or Atro­vent Res­pi­ra­to­ry So­lu­tions, some had on­ly one in stock while oth­ers had none.

“The Atro­vent has been out of stock for a lit­tle while, we have been or­der­ing and not get­ting and the Ven­tolin, that was out for a good bit of time, but we re­cent­ly get that one back,” one South phar­ma­cist who did not want to be named said.

A phar­ma­cy in Diego Mar­tin said the short­age start­ed right af­ter the lat­est lock­down two months ago. That phar­ma­cy did not have any of the so­lu­tions. One in St James did not have Atro­vent and in East Trinidad and To­ba­go, both so­lu­tions have been out of stock for weeks.

The is­sue was raised by Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la Dr Rai Rag­bir last week in a post on his so­cial me­dia page. He called on the Min­is­ter of Health to fix the prob­lem, as the short­age of Ven­tolin, Pul­mi­cort Ipravent, Asthalin and Ar­tovent Res­pi­ra­to­ry So­lu­tions were leav­ing pa­tients vul­ner­a­ble.

In the post, Rag­bir said the short­age was “jeop­ar­dis­ing the health, safe­ty and well-be­ing of the lives of chil­dren and the el­der­ly.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Phar­ma­cy Board pres­i­dent An­drew Ra­haman said none of his mem­bers had in­formed him about the short­age, but he said he him­self ex­pe­ri­enced it last month when he tried to pur­chase such me­di­a­tion.

“I think I re­call try­ing to get some, some time ago and I couldn’t get some,” he said.

Ra­haman said he be­lieves one of the rea­sons for the short­age could be be­cause in­ter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers were keep­ing the drugs for do­mes­tic use to treat COVID-19 pa­tients, as cas­es in­crease and dif­fer­ent vari­ants emerge.

“If that is what they are us­ing to as­sist the peo­ple in ICU and HCU, coun­tries will start keep­ing it,” he said.

One med­ical source said while there is not an ap­proved treat­ment de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for COVID-19, there is sup­port­ive care which us­es var­i­ous types of drugs.

A source in one of this coun­try’s COVID-19 fa­cil­i­ties, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said the res­pi­ra­to­ry so­lu­tions used in neb­u­liz­ers are used to re­lieve chest tight­ness. The source said part of the treat­ment of air­way dis­eases such as asth­ma, would al­so in­clude the use of cor­ti­cos­teroids as an an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry, which is al­ready part of the treat­ment regime for COVID-19 to help im­prove prog­no­sis.

Peo­ple with co­mor­bidi­ties such as asth­ma are more at risk of be­ing crit­i­cal­ly af­fect­ed by the virus.

In April, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford re­search team found that two puffs of asth­ma med­ica­tion budes­onide (Pul­mi­cort, one of the so­lu­tions list­ed above) giv­en to pa­tients with­in the first sev­en days of symp­toms, twice a day, could ben­e­fit many over-50s with ear­ly symp­toms.

A Cen­tral phar­ma­cist be­lieves some cit­i­zens saw in­for­ma­tion like this, pan­icked and be­gan pur­chas­ing the res­pi­ra­to­ry so­lu­tions.

“Peo­ple went in a pan­ic and buy them out… a wild goose chase,” he said.

The phar­ma­cist ad­vised that this should not be used with­out guide­lines or su­per­vi­sion from a health­care prac­ti­tion­er.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day, his re­sponse was that the mat­ter was a pri­vate one. He re­ferred us to the Phar­ma­cy Board pres­i­dent.

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) CEO Davlin Thomas mean­while said there was no short­age in the pub­lic sec­tor.

“We have in stock,” Thomas said.

An email was sent to North­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO Sal­isha Baksh but there was no re­sponse up to press time and calls to South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO Bri­an Amour went unan­swered.

Some­one who works close­ly with the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties but did not want to be iden­ti­fied al­so said there is no pub­lic short­age.

How­ev­er, some asth­mat­ic pa­tients across the coun­try, who utilise the pub­lic health care sys­tem, dis­agreed there was no short­age.

One pa­tient who con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia said, “That (there is no drug short­age in the pub­lic health sec­tor) is a lie.”

She said she has been un­able to get Sym­bi­cort at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for months and the sub­sti­tutes are not work­ing. She said she had to trav­el to Princes Town to buy a 700-dol­lar bot­tle re­cent­ly.

An­oth­er pa­tient from Cen­tral said, “The Min­is­ter is out of touch and should vis­it phar­ma­cies.”

She said she has been search­ing for med­ica­tion to treat her asth­ma for months with­out suc­cess.


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