Parents of children with a severe neurological condition have finally got some relief. Phenobarbital, a drug needed for treatment at home, is back in pharmacies.
A total of 1,900 packs have arrived. They are already on sale, but this is a one-off shipment that does not solve the wider problem. Because the problem is not medical. It is political.
Previously, we had no problems with this drug. It was regularly supplied from the Czech Republic, and families with sick children had access to it. In the summer, the Czechs raised their prices. It turned out that our government had money for everything else: buying radars, million-lei salaries for relatives of the ruling party elite, radars for Nosatîi, and bedsheets for Dragu. But there was no money for medicines for sick children. As we can see, our regime has its own priorities.
After no money could be found for the expensive Czech medicines, officials eventually decided to buy cheaper ones from Ukraine. But that plan ran into trouble, too. Our Ukrainian friends and allies, who get everything they ask of Moldova at the snap of a finger, even when it harms Moldova itself, openly dragged out the delivery of the medicine.
The bureaucratic process lasted several months because of problems related to the drug’s special status as a psychotropic substance. Neither in Chisinau nor in Kyiv did any senior official bother to make a political decision to speed up the process.
