Economic crisis: Sudanese Communist Party predicts ‘serious medical repercussions’

The health sector of the Sudanese Communist Party in Khartoum has warned of the repercussions of the economic and political crisis that the country is undergoing on health services.

Yesterday the health sector said in a statement that the policies of floating of the value of the Pound has led to an unprecedented deterioration in the purchasing value of the Pound in light of the stability of salaries around the lives of the masses of our people and the masses of health workers into particular to hell.

These policies were reflected in the prices of medicines manufactured locally, with an increase of about 30 per cent in their prices, this is in addition to the allocation of supplies to a list of medicines that do not contain the important medicines they provide to government pharmacies and a separate list of private pharmacies.

She stressed that this situation has led to scarcity in a group of important medicines such as Immunoglobulin and kidney dialysis

The statement added that the patients spend a whole day in the pharmacies of medical supplies to get the protective sprays at reduced prices.

As reported by Radio Dabanga this month, a number of pharmaceutical companies in Sudan have confirmed the scarcity of several medicinal products in the country. More than 200 types of medicines have become completely unavailable.

A number of owners of companies have complained banks refuse to open credit, pointing that commercial banks refuse to grant foreign currency even after ratification by the Central Bank of Sudan. This requires the pharmaceutical companies to import medicine first and get the currency later.

Salaries

The statement stressed that the economic crisis has affected the situation of workers in the health field, where thousands of workers queues in the banks for their salaries for no avail because of the lack of liquidity in the banks, where the workers in eight hospitals in Khartoum state have not so far received salaries for May.

Sudanese banks and forex exchange offices are witnessin an acute shortage of liquidity. The Minister of Finance pledged to tackle the situation before the end of Ramadan. Economists strongly criticise the recently adopted Foreign Exchange Regulation Bill. The exchange rate of the Dollar on the black market rose to SDG 39 last week, while the indicative US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS) remains at SDG 28.148.