The Eastern Cape Health Department has a shortage of critical chemotherapy drugs, with doctors who are treating blood and bone marrow cancers fighting for patients’ lives, and some families resorting to online fundraising for treatments, reports Daily Maverick.
Myron Leonard, chairperson of the Igazi Foundation, which advocates for patients with haematological conditions, said they have learnt “with shock” of the unavailability of critical medicines at state facilities.
“For haematology patients, this could prove fatal. The haematology unit that we support is unable to provide chemotherapy, which is a vital treatment option. Without it, patients will die.”
Supplier out of stock
Provincial Health Department spokesperson Yonela Dekeda denied the department had not paid its bills for one specific type of chemotherapy, cytarabine, used to treat bone marrow cancer. She said the department had received permission to use an unregistered chemotherapy drug through a special process providing for this, as its supplier was out of stock.
One patient’s family launched an online fundraiser to privately procure cytarabine for her. In another case, cytarabine was sourced from a private facility for a young patient.
Dekeda said: “The supplier of the specific product used to treat acute myeloid leukaemia is the sole supplier in the country and currently has no stock of cytarabine (100mg or 500mg). The department has managed to secure stock from another supplier who is not registered to supply it. The stock is expected to arrive next week.”
She confirmed state doctors were giving cytarabine to a patient who had privately procured it.
Other chemotherapy drugs that have been out of stock for weeks are vincristine, asparaginase, methotrexate and doxorubicin, an antibiotic given to cancer patients.
Asparaginase is usually given to paediatric patients with blood cancers, and has been out of stock for three months. Hospital sources said this was because the department’s account had not been paid, but that R46m out of an outstanding R64m was paid last week.
So far the department had only responded to the stockouts of cytarabine. No response has been forthcoming on the other shortages.
The department is also tackling shortages of other medicine in the region, including ARVs, antibiotics, some chronic drugs and vaccines.
The department has admitted on more than one occasion that it cannot pay its big accounts within 30 days. At the start of the new financial year, R361m had been paid – roughly 73% of the total amount owed as of 31 March 2023.
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