For the past few days, the media has been concentrated on telling the story of what happened in a private hospital; an unfortunate girl was undergoing a knee surgery, but died from an unexpected complication. Later, the anesthesiologist, in perhaps a desperate situation, had a heart attack and is in serious risk for his life.
Before I explain myself as a pharmacist, I would like to call on the media to stop their witch hunt! There are several problems here, not just only one:
First, why would a patient undergo surgery in a private hospital? She certainly has the freedom to do so, but only if she has money. I reckon that in public hospitals, the only way to get a surgery for knee ligament is by completely opening the knee, in a lengthy operation that requires a painful and exhaustive recovery. A rather painful surgery for a young girl that she attempted to avoid by choosing a private hospital.
It is not my area of expertise and I might be wrong, so I don’t want to focus on this.
The other problem is the reason of death. I don’t want to fall in the same media trap, I don’t need to wait for the results of autopsy, but if what professor Tritan Shehu, who is one of the few professors in this area, says is true, then, I don’t know what to say!
The professor thinks that we are dealing with a malign hyperthermia, a rare complication that could happen at the operating room. What is the cure?
Dontrolene!
Google it! You will be reminded of June 2013, when an eleven year-old boy came out dead from the operating room because this medication was missing.
I cannot speak with certainty for the private hospital structures and whether they were out of stock with this medication. One thing is certain: in public hospitals this medication is constantly unavailable!
“How can pills constantly be out of stock in Albania, while we have the biggest pharmaceuticals warehouses in the region?,” a friend asked.
Simple!
There is a demand for paracetamol in Albania, where 2 million pills are consumed each year.
Some pills are rare, they are known as orphan drugs and are only used in particular circumstances. Dantrolene is one of them. What pharmaceutical warehouse would offer medication that is used at a maximum of 10 tablets per year?
Public procurement for rare medication fails continuously, because for private warehouses the costs of transporting 20–25 tablets in a freezer is more than their value.
This is the reason why many rare medication are missing in Albania. For some pills that we don’t miss them in the pharmacies, but what about the parent of a child that is suffering from leukemia?
The fair question to ask, how is the rest of the world dealing with it? Let us look at Eastern Europe!
Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria have not privatized the public pharmaceutical warehouses and companies like they did here with Fufarma. On the contrary! They have been turned into companies that function with a governing board that works for the benefit of the patients, buying everything that the private sector has no interest in trading, like rare vaccines and medication, especially the ones for cancer.
Bulgaria is way ahead. It has created the Institute of Rare Conditions and Medications, where it keeps track and monitors these conditions while ensuring the medication for its patients.
But of course Bulgaria doesn’t have the guts to do our Check-up!
If what professor Shehu is saying can be confirmed, then tragedies will continue to occurs in our operation rooms.
